Building a Storybrand, with Donald Miller – Episode 215 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Bestselling author, speaker, and StoryBrand CEO Donald Miller breaks down the Storybrand framework, the biggest mistake marketers make, branding lessons from Jeb Bush to Donald Trump, the massive importance of a common side-character, internal vs external problems, solutions vs feelings, and the #1 thing you want to be known for.

About Donald:

Donald Miller is a student of story. He’s the author of New York Times Best Sellers: Blue Like Jazz, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and Scary Close. He is the CEO of StoryBrand and Business Made Simple. He is the author of ten books including Building a StoryBrand, Marketing Made Simple and How to Grow Your Small Business. Collectively, his books have spent more than a year on the NYT Bestsellers list.

Learn more at StoryBrand.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
Donald Miller is one of the masters of story and he’s a New York Times best selling author of Blue Like Jazz, Scary Close, and Building a Story Brand. So Donald, welcome back.

Donald Miller
It’s good to be back.

Host
So how’d this come about?

Donald Miller
Well, most people know me as a writer, if they know me at all, they would know that. I’ve written a bunch of books, and they’re most of them are memoir flavor, their self helpy kind of books, but they’re told in first person memoir perspective, by the time you write your eighth memoir, you’re just a clinical narcissist, right? So it’s time for a pivot of some sort. And I developed this framework based on narrative after studying stories to write screenplays and books for 15 years, I developed a framework that I could use with my own conference company to filter my messaging down. And, and what that basically means is, I figured out how I could use the elements of story, which I’m convinced of the most, is the most powerful tool to compel him to bring to talk about my company in such a way that people would be interested and want to listen and engage. And, you know, the theory was that would turn into higher revenue and higher customer engagement, all this kind of thing, develop that framework, took my own company through that framework, and we quadrupled in revenue. And we saw that, oh, this framework that we use, just to clarify our own corporate message with my conference company is more valuable than anything we’ve ever come up with. So we sort of leaked the fact that we had it. And we didn’t really put together a website or anything just sort of leaked that we had this framework that could help a company clarify their message. The first company was Procter and Gamble, and then Ford, Lincoln, and then the White House. And then and then we were off to the races, and shut down the old conference company. And it for me, it was a wonderful thing, because, you know, I really did feel like in my writing career, I’d set it all. And I’m not the sort of rider who can come up with a book every year and ride it. Life needs to happen for me, you know, I need to, to engage them stories. And basically, what I do when I write a book is I look back and I go, Okay, two years ago, what were you struggling with, that you are no longer struggling with? And if that’s interesting, I’ll write a book about it. So you know, it’s been relationships, it’s been faith, it’s been, you know, all sorts of other things. It’s been meaning of life with one of the books. And, and I didn’t have any more of those, you know, it wasn’t that struggle with anything in a long time, I guess. And so I thought, Well, I’m gonna I’m gonna turn this framework into a book.

Host
And what is it? So what is the story brand framework?

Donald Miller
It is based on the seven plot points that happen in almost every story. And I really mean, I mean, 99% of stories follow a narrative arc that is exactly the same, right. So whether we’re talking about Bridget Jones diary, or Rain Man, or Hunger Games, or Star Wars, or Romeo and Juliet, it’s the same story, basically, you just interchange some of the characters and some of the conflict. But what most people don’t know is there is an order in which a story will unfold. And if you disobey the rules of that order, you will lose the audience, right. And so if you know what those story formulas are, there are seven of them. You walk into a movie, and within 15 minutes, you can pretty much tell what this is, this is monster in the house, or this is quest, or this is whatever these seven basic of story formulas. What that said to me early on when I was thinking about this process was, this is a language that human beings speak. And most companies don’t know how to speak this language. Here’s a summary of it. Every story is a character, a hero, that is facing a villain that is causing them external, internal and philosophical problems. They are in search of a guide, another character who can help them overcome their conflict and experience a happy ending instead of a tragic ending. That’s basically sort so that’s a lot. But it what it has to do with business, though, is these seven basic principles.

Host
Ok so hold on, so head forward before we dive into the principles, so So that is, like you said, the narrative arc of every story pretty much every story not everyone, pretty much but and that’s we’re gonna get to that because that’s the solution here is understanding that but but, you know, the subtitle of the book is clarify your message. So customers will will listen. That’s right. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see marketers making?

Donald Miller
There are a lot of mistakes that companies make but here’s the big one. Companies assume that customers are going to give them an amount of time in order To understand what they offer, and they’re not, they’re not, they’re going to give you zero time, they’re going to spend four seconds on your website, they’re going to pass by your Billboard at 85 miles per hour, they’re going to swipe up on their Instagram feed and your ads not going to get any attention. What this means is you have to communicate very clearly why they should stop and pay attention. And you have to do it in a few seconds. Therefore, if you are confusing, or elusive, you are invisible. I don’t care how much you paid for that billboard. You’re invisible. I don’t care how much you pay that web designer, you are completely invisible. So most companies, oh, we gotta get some attention. So we have to say who we are, we have to say it really loud. We have to tell our story, which is a trap. 95% of creative agencies believe that. And it’s why most companies waste enormous amounts of money on marketing. Nobody cares about your story. The way that you get somebody’s attention is that you invite them into a story.

Host
You guys have a phrase that you say that’s worth capturing. You talk about if you confuse…

Donald Miller
You’ll lose. So I’ve gone around the country and asked this question to 1000s of people. What did Jeb Bush want to do for America? Nobody has ever answered that question. And I probably I bet you I’ve answered that question to now. 150,000 people, nobody’s ever answered it. When I say what did Donald Trump want to do for America? Everybody says Make America Great Again. I mean, they literally chanted in unison jabs message was confusing. Donald Trump’s message was clear. Who’s the better candidate? I mean, arguably, I think a lot of people would say Jeb Bush, especially at this point would probably have been a better president. But he lost. The reason is people were confused. And they passed him by so he’s essentially invisible. He before he called us and we we went and helped him a little bit at the very end. But before we went helped him, he was a 3%. In the polls, with $117 million in the writer eyes, super PAC and $12 million. In general campaign fun. This is not a money problem. This is a message problem.

Host
Well, and it’s kind of like you go regardless of what you think of Trump, he was crystal clear.

Donald Miller
Crystal clear. And he learned it by reality television by telling stories by understanding what gets somebody’s attention and drama gets their attention identifying villains gets people’s attention. Now, he I also think he’s extremely manipulative in the use of narrative, he vilifies people who aren’t actually villain.

Host
Well I don’t want to get too much into the politics. But but the but the point is, clarity counts for a tremendous amount.

Donald Miller
And I would even say narrative clarity, narrative clarity, who is your customer? What is their problem? How is it making them feel? Why is that just plain wrong? And why are you qualified to get them out of this problem, you want to communicate a customer centric message, the message has to be at the customer. Let me give an example. Let’s say I’m giving a talk, let’s say you were at some TED talk, you know, symposium, and there’s a bunch of talkers going up, the first guy gets up, and he says, Hey, my name is Don. And I come from Nashville, Tennessee, and I’ve lived there for about five years with my wife, we have two dogs. Second guy gets up, doesn’t say his name, doesn’t say where he’s from, doesn’t let you know that he has dogs, He literally says this, we’ve got a big problem. 50% of the people in this room will probably die of cancer. Who’s more interesting? Well, I don’t know that guy’s name. I don’t know where he lives. I don’t know if he have dogs. But I am plugged in at this point, when he goes on to say your water here is whatever. You know, when a story starts, when a character has a problem, it opens a story loop. It makes me want to pursue some sort of answer to this question so that I can close that story loop in my brain. The fact that you’re from Nashville, Tennessee, and had been married five years and have two dogs does not open a storyline in my brain, I don’t care. So I’m seconds are ticking by. And I’m waiting for you to open a story loop and you’re not doing it. So my brain is designed, I believe, by God, that when you don’t get to the point, or you’re confusing, my brain is saying, You know what, I’m burning calories listening to this guy, and he’s not going anywhere. It’s not doing anything to help me survive not doing it. There’s nothing in this talk for me. Barbarians may come over the hill here in an hour, and I need to save some calories in case I have to fight them. So I’m just gonna tune out on this guy and rest my brain a second, so that I can conserve calories in case there’s a threat in the future. When you are confusing. Your customers brain literally is programmed to shut down and ignore you as a survival mechanism serve energy. That’s exactly it. So you have to enter and you have to invite them into a story very quickly. And by doing that you have to identify an ambition that they want and a problem that is keeping them from getting what they want. And you got to talk about it right away.

Host
So the story brand framework give us the seven steps, just the names of them really quick.

Donald Miller
Well, there’s a character you identify who the character is they are the hero and you have to identify something the hero once and we have to say that in a marketing collateral. You know, if you want to say 15% on car insurance, who do you go to Geico exact seat you already you know that that’s effective marketing. You know, now what if? What if GEICO came out and had ads that said we won JD Power and Associates award for best customer Who cares. So there’s two mistakes that brands tend to make when they’re identifying what the customer wants. They either make it so elusive, or the other thing is a brand will offer so much that there’s 15 things that we offer that our customers want, and is that that’s great. But if you have a movie, and Jason Bourne wants to know who he really is, and lose 30 pounds and marry the girl, and he’s thinking about adopting a cat, and he wants to run a marathon, you will lose the audience. You have to choose one. And it would be an umbrella thing that all the stuff you offer comes in under. So Dave Ramsey offers financial peace, well, how does he do it? He offers it through selling great mortgages, he offers it through software, he offers it through classes, but he offers financial peace is the one thing he’s known for. And we’ve got to do that as a brand. So first, identify what your customer wants, then identify the problem. They are encountering getting what they want, I’m not going to go into this this will take a long time. But what is challenging them from getting what they want, what is keeping them from getting what they want. You need to position your brand to help them overcome that challenge. But you need to name the challenge. You need to name it and say we help you overcome this we help you overcome gingivitis. We help you overcome procrastination, we help you overcome weeds in your lawn, or embarrassment in your neighborhood because your lawn looks so bad, identify what it is and make it singular also, because stories work best and singular plot points. Don’t add don’t put a bunch of stuff here. And then you position yourself as the guide in the story. That guy is a character that has existed for 1000s of years since Plato and Aristotle they would put this other character in the story that is basically kind of a bit part but it’s a very important part. The sole purpose of the guide is to help the hero win the day. So the biggest paradigm shift is never position yourself as the hero only position yourself as the guide.

Host
Coming back to famous movies. So give us who are famous guides that we would see in movies.

Donald Miller
Oh, in Hunger Games would be Woody from cheers, right? Hey, Mitch. In Star Wars Luke Skywalker is the hero Obi Wan Kenobi is the guide or Yoda is the guy there’s often multiple guides in the King’s Speech. King George Of course with Hero, Lionel, the drama coach is the guide and Moneyball, Billy Beane, is the hero, Peter brand is the guide, Mr. Miyagi is the guide for karate kid, you know, on and on. And the guide sometimes can be the central character of the story. Mary Poppins is the guide in the movie, Mary Poppins, the father is the hero, and the Father is hardly on screen. Every one of us wakes up in the morning self identifying as the lead protagonist in the story as the hero, when you come to me and we meet at a cocktail party, say what do you do? I work, I helped start this company. And we’re actually you know, we have a great company culture. And we have a great, great places to work metric. And we’re trying to double revenue next year, what as you talk about your company and yourself, what my brain is doing is it’s categorizing you in my mind, and it’s categorizing you as another hero. Yeah, it’s not that I don’t like you actually quite interested. You know, I’m like, I wish this guy would keep in touch. He’s got this great story going on. I wonder, you know if that’s going to work out. For now, though, I do wish he would step aside because I’m actually looking for a guide to help me solve a problem. And you’re not talking about my problem. And you’re not positioning yourself as an authority to solve my problem. You’re telling me your story.

Host
So if you’re talking about yourself, you can’t, it’s like you’re not talking. You can’t be talking about yourself and talking about my problem at same time.

Donald Miller
You can, as long as you’re talking about yourself in the context of solving problems. So when you say, instead of saying, you know, I work for this company that helped start putting years ago, you would say something like, you know, I’d say, what do you do for a living? You say, Well, you know, no sale, most salespeople actually don’t have accountability. And they really struggled to make the calls and close the deals, because we’re all kind of lazy on the inside. I have a coaching firm that actually keeps salespeople accountable. And we find that when employers hire coaches, for their salespeople, their revenue goes through the roof. It’s called, and then you go from there. Well, what did you just do? You just identified a problem that I may have, you talked about the solution, and you invited me to live that story myself to solve my own problem. That is good, effective marketing and branding. So there’s the guide, that’s the guide them what the guide does the guide, the there’s a couple things in the book, there was a way that you position yourself as a guide in your customers subconscious, there’s two things you need to do. One of the other things that you need to do is you need to give the guide a plan, I mean, the hero a plan, the guide gives the hero, usually three or four steps that they can take, in order to solve the problem. The reason you do that, is because most customers won’t engage you if they get into a confusion. But but let’s say we’re at the cocktail party, you say, you know, you should call me my coaches can really help. I’m probably not going to call and probably like 40%, ready to call you. Because there’s kind of a fog there. I don’t know how much it’s gonna cost. Is it gonna be you know, it’s gonna take a bunch of my time. And if I have questions, I’m not going to make the deal. And here’s why. Because it’s a risk on my parts of financial risk. It’s also a social risk. I may I may be foolish by by buying into a bad service. So there’s, there’s an at the point where I start feeling that risk. Those are all excuses to walk away. And your customers are willing to take those excuses. So what you have to say to me is, Don, it’s really easy. So so what you would say is, if I say yeah, I’m kind of injured So you can have a card, you’d have your card and said, Yeah, absolutely. It’s actually super easy. You and I just get on the phone, we have a call, I assess your needs, we send you a custom strategy report saying what we think you should do, and then we help you execute it. It’s just a three step plan, it’s super easy. Well, what did you just do in my brain, you just said, Don, it’s not gonna be a lot of hard, there’s not gonna be hard work in this is gonna be super easy. We find that when you actually say to folks, hey, this is let me show you visually 123 steps, and they go, Oh, this is easy. You see a dramatic increase in customer engagement.

Host
So you start with a character, there’s something they want, that has a problem.

Donald Miller
They meet the guide. And the guide gives them a plan to solve their problem. Number five is the plans right? Yeah, actually is number four, four is the plan. And then number five, is you call them to action. Yes. So you make your direct calls to action, by now schedule an appointment register today, extremely clear. And it’s amazing how many clients come to us. And we look at every website of every client that we engage, and they come to our workshops, we put their website on a giant ad and screen scary. Like, we don’t embarrass you, but we do say, hey, you know, you need to do this, you need to do that you need to this, one of the things we often say is your calls to action are very clear. You’re saying things like learn more, or contact, that’s very evasive language, you need to say call now, by now, it needs to be extremely clear. And just clarifying your direct call to action. And in the top right corner of your website, you should have just a couple buttons. Most people have 10 or 12, that’s clutter, the only thing I want you to do is apply or buy now or schedule an appointment. So what I’m going to put that in the top right corner, and I’m going to make it a different color, painfully obvious, painfully explicitly clear, if you go to our website, you’ll see a bunch of buttons, I think contact is down at the very bottom in what we call the junk drawer. People will look for the contact button, you don’t need it at the top. What I want at the top is where you marry me trying to marry the girl here. Right? So you don’t want to like, will you marry me? And also, would you like to meet my brother? And also would you you know, let’s just stick with the one question that we’re trying to get to here. And so you know, it’s just being more direct. And also, customers need to be challenged to place an order. And most of us are selling passively, which makes us look weak. We think we’re saying this, we think we’re saying, oh, you know, I don’t want to bother you. But you know, we do have a great service, if you need it, give me a call. But I really don’t want to I don’t want to be one of those pushy salespeople who’s bothering you. We think we’re being polite, what the customer is actually hearing is, I don’t actually believe in my product, I don’t believe it will actually solve your problem. If you do want to give me some charity and buy it, I would appreciate that. But I’m not very confident that I have what can you imagine going to a doctor and a doctor says you have cancer. And they say we do. I mean, we have a pill that for a lot of other people it’s just made may just go away very quickly. It’s actually you know, but I don’t want I don’t want to bother you, you know, it’s like you’re gonna tie that guy down and force that bill down his throat and make him pay for it. Because he’s gonna dive. So if you don’t have a problem to solve, no wonder you’re being passive. But if you’re if you do have a problem to solve, you’re going to be direct. And then the final two, after calls to action are you have to tell people, what are the negative consequences of not doing business with you you had, if there are no stakes in the story, there is no story. If the bomb isn’t a threat to go off and hurt a bunch of people, it’s no reason to keep paying attention to this, the bombs a dud, it’s not gonna hurt anybody, I’m not gonna watch 90 more minutes of this guy trying to get to this bomb that we all know is not ever really going to go off, you do need to say there are some consequences not doing business with us, here’s what life looks like, you’re gonna keep procrastinating, you’re gonna make less money, you’re gonna have tooth pain, but you know, whatever it is, then the final is the success bucket. And that is we got to give people a vision of what their life can look like if they do business with us. So we got to tell them what the life will look like if they don’t and positively what their life looks like, if they do that create stakes in the story. So those are the seven, a character that wants something has a problem they have to overcome meets a guide who helps them give them a plan to show them how easy it is cause them to action. So they do not experience tragedy, and instead experience success. And and my opinion, and I believe my opinion is right. You should only communicate answers to those seven questions, anything on your website that doesn’t come from them why those seven buckets is noise, and it’s keep confusing your customers and it’s been proven to captivate a human brain. So if we use it for helping people give speeches all the time. And you know, first thing you do is walk to the platform, and you talk about what we all want, but we can’t have it, because there’s a problem. But don’t worry, because I’ve helped a lot of people get through this problem. And I’ve done it by 123 I need you to engage and do this thing in order to solve this problem for yourself. Because if you don’t bad things gonna happen. But don’t think about that. Because good things can happen that your life can look like this. That’s it, just those seven, everything else is known.

Host
So what is the difference between number seven and number one?

Donald Miller
What what the character wants is there they’re actually very similar and they can overlap. Okay? But let’s say, you know, I’m embarrassed about my yard and I don’t want my I don’t want to be embarrassed in the neighborhood anymore. That’s something I want But what’s the solution to that a beautiful lawn. So the success is the beautiful lawn, what I want is to not be embarrassed anymore. They can overlap. And they can even in those two categories, in fact, it’s beneficial if they are the same thing. Because the more you can use the exact same language, the more clear your story actually is. Gotcha. But those two are very, very similar. Well, if you think about it, the success category closes the loop on what the customer wants. So it’s actually even better if they get what they want in the end.

Host
And you use the term villain, there’s something you want, but there’s a villain.

Donald Miller
It’s the villain who causes an external, internal and philosophical problem, external problem is usually the physical problem that the company solves internal is how your customer is feeling about their external problem. I’m feeling hopeless. And I realize my problem, embarrassment is how I feel about it. Now, here’s why that’s important. People are more motivated to solve internal problems than they are to solve external problems, because nobody’s calling you because they have a problem. Nobody, they’re all calling you. Because that problem is making them feel something and they’re trying to end the feeling. They’re not trying to solve the problem. They’re trying to gain the feeling and the only way they’re gonna be feeling so I’ll probably, you know, I’m, are you embarrassed about your lawn? And do you wish it looked as good as your neighbors? My problem is, I’m embarrassed.

Host
Where do you want people to go to either connect with you guys get the book, etc, etc?

Donald Miller
They can buy the book anywhere you buy books, Barnes and noble.com amazon.com, anywhere. All that sort of information about us is available at story brand.com.

Host
What is the first step? I mean, other than buying the book, if you’re going to just go?

Donald Miller
Absolutely. Even before you start the business? If you’re at that stage, or if you’ve been in business for 10 years, the one question you need to answer is what problem do you solve? People are only motivated to solve problems. And if you can say, I solved this problem. When somebody hands you their business card, you actually, you know, put it in that Rolodex file of your brain, right? You’re trying to remember this person in their business, the Rolodex in a customer’s brain, isn’t they alphabetically categorized by the name of your business? It’s alphabetically categorized by the problem you solve. So when you say, you know, here, I do business, you know, I do I do this and we work. We work with wood a lot. I don’t know what problem you solve. So big on my brain. I’m trying to figure out where to categorize you. And I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna be enter W for wood. I’ll forget you. So if I can’t figure out what problem you solve, actually, I literally throw the thing away in my brain, it’s never in my brain again. But when you say, we work with wood, we make wood floors that don’t buckle for 100 years, because they’re the most solid wood floors in the world. They’ll never work will not net firstly, you just agitated a problem, right? I didn’t know wood floors, buckled and warped. And so now who do I go to to solve this problem that I didn’t even know existed? I go to you because your floors apparently don’t buckle or work. So just associating this. Here’s a problem that everybody’s dealing with. And we have solved that problem is the number one thing you want to do in business because you got to be known for solving a problem.

Host
Don, thank you for all that you guys do.

Donald Miller
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.