How To Grow Your Business With Storytelling

How do you grow your business with storytelling? Well, let me tell you this up front. Storytelling is a secret weapon, and here's why. The human brain pays attention to stories more than anything else. In fact, the human brain daydreams about 30% of the time. 30% of the time you're walking around this planet, you are not paying attention to whatever's happening in front of you. It's a survival mechanism, actually, because what your brain is saying is, there's nothing here that's going to help me survive. There's nothing that I need to think about. There's nothing grabbing my attention. So I'm just going to check out. That's called daydreaming. It saves cognitive calories. It saves mental calories and preserves them in case you need to think later in the day. The only tool known to man, literally the only tool known to man that will get somebody to stop daydreaming for an hour, two hours, three hours, a whole weekend if you start a Netflix series or something like that, is storytelling. When the brain engages a story, it pays attention, it locks in. It's almost like it has no choice. So how do we use storytelling to grow our business? Well, here's why we use storytelling to grow our business. It's really difficult to get attention. It's very difficult to get people to pay attention to you and your business and what you're selling, all that kind of stuff. And so when you actually include storytelling in your arsenal, storytelling in your marketing and your messaging, you get the attention that you feel like you deserve, and it really, really works. I'm Donald Miller. I wrote a book called Building a Story Brand. It's sold over 1.4 million copies. You can grab it on Amazon. It's all about how to use story to grow your business. But first, let me teach you what a story is and how you can tell a story and get customers to pay attention. Now, here's the basics of every single story that you have ever seen on television, ever seen at the movies, ever read in a book. It's Harry Potter, it's Luke Skywalker, it's all that kind of stuff. It all starts with a hero who is at peace. You have a hero and their life is just fine. Everything is going great. That can only last for maybe three minutes in a movie, and then something has to happen to the hero. They fall into a hole, a metaphorical, proverbial hole. What do I mean by fall into a hole? I mean, the hero meets a girl at a coffee shop and immediately falls in love, and then they talk for a little bit, and she's uncomfortable and leaves the coffee shop because she shouldn't be having this conversation. He doesn't get her name. He doesn't get her phone number. Hero in a hole. Every story starts out with a hero at peace, and then that peace is disrupted, and they fall into a hole. What does that mean for your business, and how do you use this idea, the way stories start and capture attention, because it obviously begs the story question, how's this hero going to get out of this hole? How are they going to resolve this conflict? The way you take advantage of this, if you're a business leader and you're trying to tell stories about your company, is you want to define the hole that your hero is in. In other words, you want to define the problem that your brand solves. Define the problem that your brand solves. Now, there's some rules here. The rules in this is, the hero is in a hole, and the hole can't be vague. In other words, the hole can't be, the hero lacks fulfillment. That's not specific enough to capture somebody's attention. If I said, hey, let's go to a movie about a hero that lacks fulfillment, you would not be interested in going to that movie. If I went to you and said, hey, another one of Liam Neeson's daughters has been kidnapped and he's got to find her, well, you're familiar with that hole. You know that that hole is entertaining. You know he's going to kill a bunch of people getting out of the hole. You know it's going to be gruesome and fun and thrilling, and so you're up to go to that movie. The hole has to be really specific. Liam Neeson has to find his daughter. The man has to find the woman that he falls in love with. The man has to finish the marathon. The team has to win the national championship. It has to be a specific hole. What does that mean for your business? It means that you need to own a problem. Let me give you an example. I had somebody come to me once, a college kid. He was working his way through college and he had a part-time job, owned his own company, super proud of him, as a pet trainer, specifically a dog trainer. He'll teach the dog to heal. He'll teach the dog not to poop in the house, all that kind of stuff, and he said, Don, give me one piece of advice for growing my dog training business, for being able to charge more because I'm limited on time because I'm going to college. I said, Look, you want to own a problem. I said, What problem do you own? He said, Dog training, misbehaving dogs. Way too vague. It's way too vague to get traction in somebody's mind. What I said is you need to own a problem that's very specific. For example, I've had dogs most of my life. Every dog I've ever had has barked when somebody knocked on the door. Somebody knocks on the door, the dog barks, my adrenaline goes up, my blood pressure goes up, the person at the door feels very unwelcome, my ears are hurting because of the dog. It's a very annoying thing. If my friend the dog trainer would actually say, when somebody says, What do you do? He would say, Well, you know how dogs bark when somebody knocks at the door and it drives you crazy? Every dog owner who doesn't have a dog trainer is going to say, Yes, that's it. That drives me crazy. He's owning a specific hole. Now he'll say, Look, in three sessions, without punishing your dog, because I just use treats, I can teach your dog not to bark when somebody's at the door. I can also teach them to heel and walk next to you, to not poop in the house, to be friendly with kids, all that kind of stuff. But when he owns the specific hole of a dog barking when somebody knocks at the door, everybody automatically understands not only that, they identify as a person in a hole. I have a dog that barks when somebody's at the door. It drives me crazy. I'm in a hole. So step number one is invite customers into a story in which they play the hero stuck in a hole. And your whole objective as a business owner is to own a hole, own a problem. And you can't own it if you're vague. You can't own it if you use inside jargon. You can't. There's people who have started $100 million companies just saying, you know, farmers date differently than regular people. Don't you want to meet somebody who understands farmers? You're in a specific hole of a lonely farmer, and they've made $100 billion owning a specific niche. When I say own a niche, I mean own a problem. That is step one. You've got to start by saying, well, do you struggle with this? Are you feeling frustrated about this? Do you have this problem? If so, let's do business. The next thing that happens is a guide, another character, comes into the hero's life. The guide has usually struggled with the same problem that the hero has. The guide used to want to be a Jedi and became a Jedi. That's Yoda, right? The guide was stuck in the Hunger Games and won the Hunger Games. That's Hamish. Gandalf, right? It's a wise, older person, usually older but not always, who empathizes with the hero in the hole. That's you. You want to position yourself as the guide in the hero's life. In other words, don't make the story about you. Make it about the hero in the hole. Then you play a part in the hero's life. Why do you want to be the hero? Why do you want to be the guide and not the hero? There are several reasons. Here's a couple. The hero is weak. The hero is always a weak character. They're only strong in the last nine minutes of the movie. Until then, they are a weak character. So never play the hero in the story because the hero will come off as weak. Listen, Hillary Clinton lost a presidential election that she was favored to win. Until the very night of the election, everybody thought she was going to win. And I guarantee you the reason that she lost was her tagline was, I'm with her. She made herself the hero of the story and voters couldn't identify. If she would have just said, she's with us, I think she would have won the campaign. Why? Because that makes the voter the hero of the story and her as the guide who's helping the hero win. Instead, she put herself in a hole and said, I'm in the hole of wanting to be president. Will somebody rescue me? Well, we don't want our president to be weak. So she lost a presidential election by disobeying this law. And you're not going to do it. Never make yourself the hero in the story always make yourself the guide. Now what you want to do is you want to express empathy toward the hero. You want to say, I'm so sorry you're in that hole. I'm so sorry your dog is barking. That must drive you crazy. And when you actually express care and concern for the hero in the hole, you create a bond. Now the hero is interested in you. They feel hope. What they need is a product that's going to solve their problem. And that's where good storytelling comes in. You position your product as the rope that goes into the hole. This product will get you out of the hole. This dog training will stop that dog from barking, right? And so you throw the rope into the hole. Now what happens is your product in the context of their story becomes much more valuable because it's getting them out of a hole. And the bigger the hole, the more valuable the product. And so you want to position the product as the solution to the customer's problem. And then you pull them out of the hole. And in every story, what happens is the hero is rescued and they are changed. The hero transforms into a better version of themselves. And so in your story, you want to say, look, if you're somebody whose dog barks at the door, it's got to be frustrating. You've got to feel like a bad dog owner. You've got to feel like a bad neighbor because the neighbor comes and the dog is making them uncomfortable at the door. It's got to drive you crazy. I want to train your dog, right? I'm throwing the rope into the hole. Train your dog to not bark at the door so you're going to be a competent, successful dog owner. I have now offered you a personal transformation along with the dog not barking. I'm offering you a transformation. Human beings long to be a better version of themselves. And so when you add a transformation to your sales pitch, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to help you be more competent. Then the perceived value of the product is even higher and the urgency of buying that product is even greater. And then finally, the hero lives happily ever after returned to that sense of peace. This is called the obligatory or climactic scene in screenplay terms. It basically means the happy ever after vision of what your life can look like. And you would just say something like, your dog will never bark when somebody knocks at the door and that problem will be gone forever. And so you can see, using just a few soundbites, I can invite a customer into a story. Let's go back and look at this for a second. You start with a hero at peace. You need a problem soundbite. The soundbite that invites somebody into a story always starts with a problem. Well, have you ever had a dog that barks at the door when somebody knocks? Yes, I've got a dog right now that barks in the door. I identify as a person in a hole because you used a problem soundbite. Then you're going to use what I call an empathy soundbite. The empathy soundbite is, I feel for you. I've had a lot of clients whose dogs bark at the door, makes people uncomfortable, makes your blood pressure go up, hurts your ears, makes you feel like you've got a bad dog, makes you feel like an incompetent dog owner. My gosh, I feel for you. That I feel for you positions you as the guide in the hero's life. I can actually come to your house in three sessions without rebuking your dog, without punishing your dog. I just use treats to do it, and I can stop that dog from barking at the door so that you could be a competent dog owner who loves the relationship they have with their dog. It's going to be a great family dog. You're going to know what you're doing, and your dog will never bark at the door again. Five soundbites. Problem soundbite. Empathy soundbite positions you as the guide. Answer soundbite positions the product as the solution to the problem. Change soundbite sells the transformation that you're going to get along with the product, and end result soundbite, five soundbites, problem, empathy, answer, change, end result, spells the word peace because at the end of the story, you want your customer returned to a sense of peace. These five soundbites, we call it the StoryBrand soundbite strategy, effectively invite customers into a story, and those five soundbites will grow your business. You can use these five soundbites to invite customers into a story anytime you want. Casual conversation at a cocktail party, in an elevator pitch, in a keynote presentation. You can use the same words on your website, on landing pages. You can use them in your social media feed. In fact, all five soundbites need to be repeated constantly in your social media feed, and that is how you use storytelling to grow your business. You don't tell your story. You invite customers into a story. Now listen, if you want to see me give examples of how to use five soundbites to sell things, just go to StoryBrand.com, and I will give you a free soundbite strategy example video emailed to you once each week for free. Just go to StoryBrand.com. I'm going to show you how to use a soundbite strategy to sell a book, to sell a retail product, to sell pet food, to sell B2B products, to sell SaaS products. I'm going to teach you the soundbite strategy if you want to run for office. I'm going to teach you the StoryBrand soundbite strategy if you want to get donations for a non-profit. Literally, if you sign up, I'm going to send you 52 videos in the next year that are just me showing you different examples of StoryBrand soundbite strategies, and that's really going to help you write your own soundbites and come up with great ideas to invite customers into a story. So make sure to go to StoryBrand.com and get those examples today. The bottom line is, if you're not using storytelling to grow your business, you're missing out on a competitive advantage. And if your competitors use storytelling to grow their business, they are going to beat you. Why? Because the human brain has no choice but to pay attention when it is invited into a story. I want you to be able to do that. I want to transform you into a StoryBrand soundbite specialist. I want you to know how to use soundbites to grow your business and invite people into a story. Just go to StoryBrand.com. I'll send you those videos every week, and I'll teach you how to do it. All right? We will see you at StoryBrand.com. Go there right now. Don't wait.