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what's going on guys welcome back to the channel or if you're new here welcome on this channel i like to uh sit down and go live and read an entire book from cover to cover for you guys to enjoy so if you guys are interested in that make sure to get subscribed and like this video for more content like this so listen every day business owners make mistakes that cost them thousands if not millions of dollars if they do not clearly explain what it is their company does uh the reason why i got this book

is because as you guys can tell i'm a kajabi hero and um in this video here i unboxed a 50k um you know a box an award for selling over 50 000 of online courses using kajabi and this is the note that they sent me congratulations on accomplishing your first 50k on kajabi this is an amazing milestone and you should be very proud enjoy this gift from myself and the team we love this book because it has taught us that we are not the heroes of our story but our customers are enter hijab hero this

book perfectly articulates how to build a brand that focuses on being simple over being catchy and how to be sure your customers succeed i encourage you to read this and imply apply these principles to your own business and then you'll be well on your way to the next hero tier kenny reuter uh funny enough that you mentioned that kenny is we have already uh reached the tier the box is already on the way so i'm going to be unboxing that on this channel here so building a story brand i really hope this uh audiobook helps

you guys if it does be sure to like i said subscribe and like this video and i will leave timestamps in the description box below for uh the different chapters building a story brand clarify your message so your customers will listen by donald miller [Music] guys and do support this book by purchasing it with i'll leave a link down below to purchase this book to support it and read along um introduction this is not a book about telling your company's story a book like that would be a waste of time customers don't generally care about

your story they care about their own your customers should be the hero of your story not your brand this is the secret every phenomenally successful business understands what follows is a seven part framework that will change the way you talk about your business and perhaps the way you do business each year we help more than three thousand businesses stop wasting money on marketing to get their company growing by helping them clarify their message this framework will work for you regardless of your industry to get the most out of this book i encourage you to do

the three things read this book and understand the sb7 framework number two filter your message through the framework and number three clarify your message so more customers will listen marketing has changed businesses that invite their customers into a heroic story grow businesses that don't are forgotten may we all be richly rewarded for putting our customers stories above our own section number one why marketing is a money pit chapter one the key to being seen heard and understood most companies waste enormous amounts of money on marketing we all know how mind-numbing it is to spend precious

dollars on new marketing efforts that get no results when we see the reports we wonder what went wrong or worse whether our product is really good as we thought it was but what if the problem wasn't the product what if the problem was the way we talked about the product the problem is simple the graphic artists and designers were hiring to build our websites and brochures have degrees in design and know everything about photoshop but how many of them have read a single book about writing good sales copy how many of them know how to

clarify your message so your customers will listen and worse these companies are glad to take your money regardless of whether you see results or not the fact is pretty websites don't sell things words sell things and if we haven't clarified our message our customers won't listen if we pay a lot of money to design a to a design agency without first clarifying our message we might as well be holding a bull horn up to a monkey the only thing a potential customer will hear is noise still clarifying our message isn't easy i had one client

say that when he tried to do so he felt like he was inside the bottle trying to read the label i understand before i started the story brand i was a writer and i spent thousands of hours staring at a blank computer screen wondering what to say that soul-wrenching frustration led me to create a communication framework based on the proven power of story and i swear it was like discovering a secret formula the writing got easier and i sold millions of books after using the framework to create clear messages in my books i used it

to filter the marketing collateral in my own small company once we got clear we doubled in revenue for four consecutive years i now teach that framework to more than 3 000 businesses each year once they get their message straight our clients create quality websites incredible keynotes emails that get opened and sales letters people respond to why because nobody will listen to your message if it isn't clear no matter how expensive your marketing material may be at storybrand we've had clients double triple and even quadruple their revenue after they've gotten one thing straight their message the

story brand framework has been just as effective for billion dollar brands as it has been for mom and pop businesses and just as powerful for american corporations as it has been for those in japan and africa why because the human brain no matter what region of the world it comes from is drawn toward clarity and away from confusion the reality is we aren't just in a race to get our own products to market we're also in a race to communicate why our customers need those products in their lives even if we have the best products

in the marketplace we'll lose to an inferior product if our own competitors offer is communicated more clearly so what's your message can you say it easily is it simple relevant and repeatable can your entire team repeat your company's message in such a way that it is compelling have new hires been given talking points so they can use to describe what the company offers and why every potential customer should buy it how many sales are we missing out on because customers can't figure out what our offer is within five seconds of visiting our website why so

many businesses fail to find out why our market so many marketing and branding attempts fail i called my friend mike mc harg mike often called science mike because he hosts a successful podcast called ask science mike spent 15 years using science-based science-based methodologies to help companies figure out how their customers think specifically in the tech space sadly he left advertising when a client asked him to create an algorithm predicting the associated buying habits of people with diabetes translation they wanted him to sell junk food to diabetics mike refused and left the industry he's a good

man i called though because he still has incredible insight as to how marketing story and behavior all blend together at my request mike flew to nashville to attend one of the our workshops after two days learning the story brand seven part framework hereafter called the sb7 framework we sat on my back porch and i grilled him with questions why does this formula work what's happening in the brains of consumers as they encounter a message filtered through this formula what's the science behind why brands like apple and coke who intuitively use this formula dominate the marketplace

there's a reason most marketing collateral doesn't work mike said putting his feet up on the coffee table their marketing is too complicated the brain doesn't know how to process the information more simple and predictable the communication the easier it is for the brain to digest story helps because it is a sense-making mechanism essentially story formulas put everything in order so the brain doesn't have to work to understand what's going on mike went on to explain that the amo that among the million things the brain is good at the overriding function of the brain is to

help an individual survive and thrive everything the human brain does all day involving involves helping that person and the people that person cares about get ahead in life like my subscribers mike asked if i remembered that old pyramid we learned about in high school abraham maslow's hierarchy of needs first he reminded me the brain is tasked with setting up a system in which we can eat and drink and survive physically in our modern first world economy this means having a job and a dependable income then the brain is concerned with safety which might entail having

a roof over our heads and a sense of well-being and power that keeps us from being vulnerable after food and shelter are taken care of our brains start thinking about our relationships which entail everything from reproducing in a sexual relationship to being nurtured in a romantic relationship to creating friendships a tribe who will stick by us in case there are any social threats finally the brain begins to concern itself with a greater psychological physiological or even spiritual needs that give us a sense of meaning what mike helped me understand is that without knowing it human

beings are constantly scanning their environment even advertising for information that is going to help them meet their primitive need to survive this means that when we ramble on about how we have the biggest manufacturing plant on the west coast our customers don't care why because that information isn't helping them eat drink far find a mate fall in love build a tribe or experience a deeper sense of meaning or stockpile weapons in case of barbarians start coming out over the hill behind our cul-de-sac so what do our customers do when we blast a bunch of noise

at them they ignore us and so right there on my back porch mike defined two critical mistakes brands make when they talk about their products and services mistake number one the first mistake brands make is they fail to focus on the aspects of their offer that will help people survive and thrive all great stories are about survival either physical emotional relational or spiritual a story about anything else won't work to captivate an audience nobody's interested this means that if we position our products and services as anything but an aid to helping people survive thrive be

accepted find love and achieve aspirational identity or bond with a tribe that will defend them physically and socially good luck selling anything to anyone these are the only things people care about we can take that truth to the bank or to the bankruptcy court should we ignore it as an undeniable fact mike says our brains are constantly sorting through information and so we discard millions of unnecessary facts every day if if we were to spend an hour in a giant ballroom our brains would never know to think to count how many chairs are in the

room why or meanwhile we would always know where the exits are why because our brains don't need to know about how many chairs there are in the room to survive but knowing where the exits are would be helpful in case there was a fire without knowing it the subconscious is always categorizing and organizing information and when we talk publicly about our company's random backstory or internal goals we're positioning ourselves as the chairs not the exits but this poses a problem mike continued processing information demands that the brain burn that makes the demands of the brain

burns calories and burning too many of these calories acts against the brain's primary job to help us survive and thrive mistake number two the second mistake brands make is they cause their customers to burn too many calories in an effort to understand their offer when having to process too much seemingly random information people begin to ignore the source of that useless information in effort to conserve calories in other words there is a survival mechanism within our customers brain that is designed to tune us out should we ever start confusing them imagine every time we talk

about our products to potentially to potential customers they have to start running a tread running on a treadmill literally they have to jog the whole time we're talking how long do you think they're going to pay attention not long and yet this is precisely what's happening when we start our elevator pitch or keynote address when somebody visits our website they're burning calories to process the information we're sharing and if we don't say something and say something quickly they can use and they can use to survive or thrive they will tune us out these two realities

the reality that people are looking for brands that can help them survive and thrive and the reality that communication must be simple explain why the sb7 framework has helped so many businesses increase their revenue the key is to make your company's message about something that helps the customers survive and do so in such a way that they can understand it without burning too many calories story to the rescue mic agreed the most powerful tool we can use to to organize information so mike agreed the most powerful tool we can use to organize information so people

don't have to burn very many calories is a story as he said story is a sense-making device it identifies a necessary ambition defines challenges that are battling to keep us from achieving that ambition and provides us a plan to conquer those challenges when we define the elements of a story it really as it relates to our brand we create a map customers can follow to engage our products and services still when i talk about story to business leaders they immediately put me in a category with artists thinking i want to introduce them to something fanciful

but that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about a concrete formula we can use to garner attention from otherwise distracted customers i'm talking about practical steps we can take to make sure people see us hear us and understand exactly why they simply must engage our products the formula for clear communication formulas are simply the summation of best practices and the reason why we like them is because they work we've been given a great manage we've been given great management formulas like ken blanchard's situational leadership and formulas we can use in manufacturing like six sigma

and lean manufacturing but what about a formula for communication why don't we have a formula we can use to effectively explain what our company offers the world the story brand framework is that formula we know it because some of some form of this formula has been active for thousands of years to help people tell stories talk about a summation of best practices when it comes to getting people to pay attention this formula will be your most powerful ally once you know the formulas you can predict the path most stories will take i've learned these formulas

so well that my wife hates going to movies with me because she knows at some point i'm going to elbow her and whisper her something like that guy's going to die in 31 minutes story formulas reveal a well worn path in the human brain and if we want to stay in business we need to position our products along this path if you're going to continue reading this book i have to warn you i'm going to ruin movies for you i mean these things really are formulaic they're predictable and they're predictable for a reason storytellers have

figured out how to keep an audience's attention for hours the good news is these formulas work just as well at growing your business as they do at entertaining an audience the key is clarity the narrative coming out of a company and for that matter inside of a company must be clear in a story audiences must always know who the hero is what the hero wants and who the hero has to defeat to get what they want what tragic thing will happen if the hero doesn't win and what wonderful thing will happen if they do if

an audience can't answer these basic questions they'll check out and the movie will lose millions at the box office if a screenwriter breaks these rules they'll likely never work again the same is true for the brand you represent our customers have questions burning inside them and if we aren't answering those questions they'll move on to another brand if we haven't identified what our customer wants what problem we are helping them solve and what life will look like after they engage our products and services for example we can forget about thriving in the marketplace whether we're

writing a story or attempting to sell products our message must be clear always in fact at storybrand we have a mantra if you confuse you'll lose business has an enemy business has a fierce insidious enemy that if not identified and combatted will contort our company into an unrecognizable mess the enemy i'm talking about is noise noise has killed more ideas products and services than than taxes recessions lawsuits climbing interest rates and even inferior product design i'm not talking about noise inside of our business i'm talking about the noise we create as a business we often

call marketing what we often call marketing is really just clutter and confusion sprayed all over our websites emails and commercials and it's costing us millions years ago a storybrand client who attended one of our workshops pushed back i don't think this will work for me he said my business is too diverse to reduce down to a simple message i asked him to explain i have an industrial painting company with three different revenue streams in one division we powder coat auto parts and another we apply sealant to concrete and in another we have a sterilizing painting

process used specifically in hospitals his business was diverse but nothing so complex that it couldn't be simplified so more people would hire him i asked him if i could put his website on one giant television screen so the entire workshop could see it his website was thoughtful but it didn't make a great deal of sense from an outsider's perspective which is how every customer refused your business the man had hired a fine arts painter to create a painting of his building was he selling a building and at first glance it looked like his website like

a website for an italian restaurant the first question i asked when i went to the website was do you serve free bread six there was a thousand links ranging from contact information to faq to timeline of the company's history there was even links to the non-profits for the businesses they supported it was as though as it was as though he was answering a hundred questions his customers had never asked i asked to the class to raise their hand if they thought his business would grow if he wiped the website clean and simply featured an image

of a guy in a white lab coat painting something next to the test that next to a text that read we paint all kinds of accompanied by a button in the middle of the page that said get a quote the entire class raised their hands of course his business would grow why because he finally stopped forcing clients to burn calories thinking about his life and business and offered the one thing that would solve his customers problem a painter what we think about what we think we are saying to our customers and what our customers are

actually are hearing are two different things and customers make buying decisions not based on what we say but what based on what they hear stop saying that all experienced writers know the key to great writing isn't in what they say it's in what they don't say the more we cut out the better the screenplay or book the mathematician and philosopher blaise pascal is often credited for sending a long letter stating he simply didn't have the time to send a short one if we went to connect with if we went if we want to connect with

customers we have to stop blasting them with noise the beautiful thing about clarifying our message using this sp7 framework is that it makes communicating easy no longer will you sit in front of the blank page wondering what to say on your website in your elevator pitch or in your email blast in your facebook ads or even in your television or radio commercials clarifying your message whether we run a small business company or a multi-billion dollar brand confusing our customers is costing us money how many of our team members can explain how we help our customers

survive and thrive how many people are buying from our competition because they've communicated more clearly than we have how long will we last if we keep talking about aspects of our products our customers don't care about things can be different to clarify our message we're going to need a formula a serious formula this formula needs to organize our thinking reduce our marketing effort obliterate confusion terrify the competition and finally get our business growing again let's learn about that formula now chapter 2 secret weapon that will grow your business to help you grow your company i'm

going to guide you in a simplifying your message into sound bites that come down from seven categories once these seven once you have these seven messages down any anxiety you experience talking to your about your brand will subside and customers will now be more attracted to what you offer we are going to figure out what your customers story and place are we're going to figure out your customer story and place ourselves smack in the middle of it story is atomic it is a perpetual energy and can power a city story is the one thing that

can hold a human being's attention for hours nobody can look away from a good story in fact neuroscientists claim the average human being spends more than 30 percent of their time daydreaming unless they're reading listening to or watching a story unfold why because when we are engaged in a story the story does the daydreaming for us story is the greatest weapon we have to combat noise because it organizes information in such a way that people are compelled to listen story makes us makes music out of noise living in nashville i've learned quite a bit about

difference i've learned quite a bit about the difference between music and noise nearly half of our friends here are musicians and i'm amazed at their talent hardly a dinner party goes by without somebody grabbing a guitar i could summarize what i've learned about the difference between music and noise by saying my friends by and noise by saying my friends make music and i make noise but there's actually some complicated science involved technically speaking music and noise are similar both are created by traveling that rattle our eardrums music however is noise that has been submitted to

certain rules that allows the brain to engage on a different level if i played you a recording of a dumb truck backing up birds chirping and children laughing you'd not remember those sounds the next day but if i played you a beatles song you'd likely be humming it for a week there's an obvious difference between a well-choreographed piece of music and the sound of a cat chasing a rat through a wind wind chime factory which is the equivalent of an average corporate website keynote speech or elevator pitch the brain remembers music and forgets about noise

just like the brain remembers some brands and forgets about others story is similar to music a good story makes a series of random elements events and distills them into the essence of what really matters there's a reason the final cut of a movie is called the final cut prior to a theatrical version a film has gone through rounds upon rounds of edits omissions revisions and deletions sometimes entire characters end up on the cutting room floor why because storytellers have filters to cut out the noise if a character or scene doesn't deserve the plot it has

to go when clients want to add a bunch of confusion to their marketing message i asked them to consider the ramifications of doing so if they were i asked them to consider the ramifications of doing so if they were writing a screenplay i mean what if the bourne identity were a movie about a spy named jason bourne searching for his true identity but it also included scenes of born trying to lose some weight marry a girl and pass the bar exam win jeopardy and adopt a cat the audience would lose interest when storytellers bombard people

with too much information the audience is forced to burn too many calories organizing the data as a result they daydream walk out of the theater or in the case of digital marketing click to another site without placing an order why do so many brands create noise rather than music it's because they don't realize they are creating noise they're actually they actually think people are interested in the random information they're doling out this is why we need a filter the essence of branding is to create simple relevant message we can repeat over and over so that

we brand ourselves into the public consciousness steve jobs and the message of apple apple grew much larger only after steve jobs began filtering his message through the lens of story transformation in his thinking happened after working with and partially creating the genius storytelling factory that is pixar when jobs came back to apple after being surrounded by professional storytellers he realized the story was everything just think about the incredible transformation that took place in steve steve's life after and career after pixar in 1983 apple launched their computer lisa the last project jobs worked on before he

was let go jobs released lisa with a nine-page ad in the new york times spelling out the computer's technical features it was nine pages of geek talk nobody outside of nasa was interested and the computer bombed when jobs returned to the company after running pixar apple became customer-centric compelling and clear in their communication the first campaign he released went from nine pages in the new york times just to two words on a billboard all over america think different when apple began filtering their communication to make it simple and relevant they actually stopped featuring computers most

of their advertising instead they understood their customers were all living breathing heroes and they tapped into their stories they did this by identifying what their customers wanted to be seen and heard defining their customers challenge that people didn't recognize their hidden genius and offering their customers a tool they could use to express themselves computers and smartphones each of these realizations are pillars in the ancient storytelling and critical for connecting with customers i'll teach you about these three three pillars and more in the coming chapters but for now just realize that the time apple spent clarifying

the role they play in their customer story is one of the primary factors responsible for their growth notice through the story of apple uh though the story of apple isn't about apple it's about you you're the hero in the story and they play a role more like q in the james bonds movies they are the guy you go to see when you need a tool to help you win the day despite what accolades the of the cult of mack say apple likely doesn't make the best computers or phones best is subjective of course whether apple

has the best technology though is uh debatable but it doesn't matter people don't buy the best products they buy the products they can understand the fastest apple has inserted themselves into the customer's story like no other technology company and a result they're not only the largest technology company they're also in the top 10 largest companies period if we want our companies to grow we should borrow a page from their playbook we should clarify our message story can grow your business to understand better what steve jobs learned during his days at pixar let's take off our

business hats for a few for a few pages and pretend we're learning about story for the first time once you understand how story integrates with your brand message you'll be able to create communication pieces and even a brand strategy that engages more customers and grows your business and if you really get this down people around the office will wonder how in the world you became such a marketing genius after studying hundreds of movies novels plays and musicals across nearly every imaginable genre and after having written eight books of my own along with a nationally released

screenplay i've narrowed down the necessary elements of compelling story to seven basic plot points if we were writing a full screenplay of course we would need more but for the purposes of understanding and entering into our customer story there are only seven story in a nutshell here is a nearly every story you see or hear in a nutshell a character who wants something encounters the problem before they can get to it before they can get it at the peak of their despair a guide steps into their lives and gives them a plan and calls them

to action that helps that action helps them avoid a failure and ends in a success that's really it you'll you'll see some form of this structure in nearly every movie you watch from here on out these seven basic plot points are like chords of music in the sense that you can use them to create an infinite variety of narrative expression just like playing the guitar with those seven chords you can create any number of songs varying too far from these chords however means you'll risk descending into noise let's look at how this simple framework plays

out in a couple of familiar stories once you can recognize the framework and stories you'll start to understand exactly where the story of your brand is confusing customers by not sticking to the formula the secret weapon that will help your business grow character has a problem and meets a guide who gives them a plan and calls them to action the story ends in a success and helps them avoid a failure so that's what it looks like right there in the first hunger games movie katniss everdeen must complete in it must compete in a twisted fight

to the death tournament forced upon the people of panem by an evil tyrannical government called the capital the problem she faces is obvious she must kill or be killed katniss is overwhelmed and underprepared and outnumbered along with hate mitch is the brash liquor loving grizzle grizzled winner of a previous hunger games tournament haymitch assumes the role of katniss's mentor helping her hatch a plan to win over the public this gains katniss more sponsors thereby equipping her with more resources for the fight and increasing her chances of winning here is a hunger first hunger game story

laid out on the story brand grid katniss encounters this problem external must survive internal must stay good and authentic and a philosophical problem is a tyrannical versus democracy meets hey mitch he's one of the hunger games so he's the mentor the guide he has he has to endear the public to get her sponsors that's the plan he competes and then katniss lives the district 12 rejoices or katniss dies and district 12 is crushed in star wars a new hope our reluctant hero luke skywalker experiences a devastating tragedy his uncle his aunt and uncle are murdered

at the hands of the evil empire this sets a series of events in motion luke begins the journey of becoming a jedi knight and destroys the empire's battle station the death star which allows the rebellion to live and fight another day enter the guide obi-wan kenobi a former jedi who once trained luke's father so luke the external problem must defeat the empire the internal problem is is he a jedi and the philosophical problem is good versus evil not every story works out this way now you know and then he meets obi-wan lived as a jedi

he must trust the force go defeat the empire the rebellion and the rebellion avoids the defeat or the rebellion rebelling is crushed not every story works in this way but some most do sometimes a writer will bring in multiple guides or usually to the story's peril leave the guide out but the formula holds up and almost every story you'll encounter the fact that nearly every movie you go see at the theater includes these seven elements mean something aft after thousands of years storytellers the world over have arrived at this formula as a means of best

practices simply put this framework is the pinnacle of narrative communication the further we veer away from these seven elements the harder it becomes for audiences to engage this is why indie films which often break the from the formula to gain critical acclaim fail miserably at the box offices critics are often hungry for something different yet the masses who don't study movies professionally simply want accessible stories it seems true that some brands as well as some screenwriters break these formulas and succeed all the same but when you look closely this is rarely the case truly creative

and brilliant marketers and screenwriters know how to use the formula while still avoiding the cliche this in my opinion is what makes them brilliant when you get good at this sb7 framework hardly anybody will notice you are using it the three crucial questions so how do we make story how do we make the story are compelling the our company is telling clear remember the greatest enemy our business faces is the same enemy a good story faces noise at no point should we be able to pause a movie and be unable to answer three questions what

does the hero want who or what is opposing the hero getting what she wants who what will the heroes look like what will the hero's life look like if she does or does not get what she wants if you've ever started daydreaming in a movie it was likely because you couldn't answer one of those three questions or worse you didn't care here's the kicker if all if if these three questions can't be answered within the first 15 to 20 minutes the story has already descended into noise and will almost certainly fail at the box office

at storybrand our certified guides have reviewed thousands of pages of marketing copy that have had nothing to do with the story of the customer we tell our clients the same thing my filmmaker friends told me when i was writing screenplays anything that doesn't serve the plot has to go just because a tagline sounds great or a picture on a website grabs the eye that doesn't mean it helps us enter into our customer story in every line of copy we write we're either serving the customer story or descending into confusion we're either making music or making

noise nobody remembers a company that makes noise does your marketing pass the grunt test just like there are three questions audiences must be able to answer to engage in a story there are three questions potential customers must answer if we engage them with our brand and they should be able to answer those questions within five seconds of looking at our website and marketing or marketing material what do you offer how will it make my life better what do i need to do to buy it at storybrand we call this passing the grunt test the critical

question is could a caveman look at your website and immediately grunt what you offer imagine a guy wearing a bare skin t-shirt sitting in a cave by a fire with a laptop across his lap we are looking at your website would he be able to grunt at an answer to the three questions posed above if you were an aspiring company would he be able to grant you sell headache medicine me feel better fast me get it at walgreens if not you're likely losing sales clarity produces results one of our early clients kyle schultz was a

fireman fireman in ohio who looked into storybrand because he wanted to leave his job and pursue his passion of teaching photography he had recently launched an online photography course aimed at parents he worked hard to create terrific video terrific video training allowing moms everywhere to finally start using the basic camera they'd placed in the junk drawer because they felt it was too complicated interested interest was decent in his first launch he sold 25 000 of the online courses he was ecstatic still it wasn't enough money for him to quit his job and pursue teaching photography

full time when kyle subscribed to building a story brand podcast he began to wonder whether his messaging was too confusing the night before his next launch he bought our online course and edited his website using the s by sb7 framework in fact he removed 90 of the text he previously used in on his first sales page and he also stopped using inside language like f-stop and depth of field instead he uses frames as like take those great pictures where the black round is blurry the next day kyle sent a mass email to the exact same

email list he had contacted only six months before and offered the same course again he wasn't expecting much because he had already sold to this list but to his surprise the kohl's sold another 103 thousand dollars worth of registrations the difference he highlighted the aspect of his course that would help parents survive and thrive build stronger tribes strengthen family connections and connect more deeply with life's greater meaning he did so in such a simple way with fewer than 300 words on his sales page that people didn't even have to burn calories to figure out what

was in it for them overnight he had gone from a cluttered mess to a clear guide in his customer story today kyle has quit his job and runs schultz photoschool.com full time every day he gets emails from parents thanking him for helping them feel great about the photographs they're taking of their children we need a filter alfred hitchcock defines a good story as life with the dull parts taken out good branding is the same our companies are complex for sure but a good messaging filter will remove all the stuff that bores our customers and will

bear down on the aspects of our brand that will help them survive and thrive so how do we come up with those with these messages it's simple we use the same grid storytellers used and these used in these storytell stories used in telling stories to map out the story for our customers then we create clear and refined statements in the seven relevant categories of their lives to position ourselves as their guide when we do this we become the people who help them overcome their challenges and achieve the life they want to live once we begin

filtering our message through the sp7 framework and using it as a communication filter we will be able to repeat powerful messages over and over that brand us into our customer story the sp7 framework is simple fun and effective and when you've done your entire brand message is going to sit on a single sheet of paper we call this single sheet of paper actually it's free digital application i'm going to introduce it to you the story brand brand script once you finish the process you'll use your brand script to create all manner of improved marketing material

and you'll be more clearly positioned in the marketplace when customers finally understand how you can help them live a wonderful story your company will grow with that let's take a look at the story brand framework chapter three the simple sb7 framework in the next section of the book i'll dive into the elements of the sb7 framework showing you how each important category of the messaging makes your brand inviting to customers for now let's fly over the framework so you can understand in summary form all that it can do to simplify your marketing and messaging the

story brand framework number one a character story brand principle one the customer is the hero not your brand a major paradigm shift in the sp7 framework is that the customer is the hero of the story not your brand when we position our customer as the hero and ourselves as guide we will be recognized as a trusted resource to help them overcome their challenges positioning the customer as the hero in the story is more than just good manners it's also good business communication expert nancy duarte has done extensive research on how to create powerful presentations the

strategy she recommends to her clients is simple when giving a speech position yourself as a yoda and your audience as luke skywalker it's a small but powerful shift that honors the journey of the audience and positions positions us as a leader providing wisdom products and services our audience needs in order to thrive once we identify who our customer is we have to ask ourselves what they want as it relates to our brand the catalyst for any story that the hero wants something the rest of the story is a journey about discovering whether the hero will

get what they want unless we identify something our customer wants they will never feel invited into the story we are telling as we explore the first element of the story brand framework i'll show you what i'll show you why and how to invite your customers into a story that makes them want to pay attention to your brand number two has a problem story brand principle number two companies tend to sell solutions to external problems but customers buy solutions to internal problems in its purest form a story starts with a character who lives in peace and

stability suddenly the stability is disrupted a bomb goes off someone is kidnapped or disaster strikes the hero then sets out on a journey to return to the peaceful life they once enjoyed customers are attracted to us for the same reason heroes are pulled into stories they want to solve a problem that has in big or small ways disrupted their peaceful life if we sell lawn care products they're coming to us because they're embarrassed about their lawn or they simply don't have the time to do the work if we sell advanced financial advice they're coming to

us because they're worried about their retirement plan it may not be as dramatic or sexy as james bond going to queue to grab the latest high-tech spy weapons but the premise is the same our customers are in trouble and they need help by talking about the problems our customers face we deepen their interest in everything we offer what most brands miss however is that uh is that we there are three levels of of problems a customer encounters in stories heroes encounter external internal and philosophical problems why because these are the the same three levels of

problems humans face in their everyday lives almost all companies try to sell solutions to external problems but as we unfold the story brand framework you'll see why customers are more invited to resolve their internal inner frustrations in the second part of the story brand framework we'll look at the three levels of problems our customers experience and create messages offering create messages offering to resolve those problems understanding and addressing the three levels of problems our customers face will help us create a brand promise that will connect with customers on a primitive level and at their deepest

form of point of need this in turn will help us endear customers and create passion passionate brand evangelists number three and meets a guide story brand principle number three customers aren't looking for another hero they're looking for a guide if if heroes in a story could solve their own problems they would never get into the trouble in the first place that's why storytellers through centuries have created another character to help the hero win depending on the scholar you talk to there are many names for this character but the term we used at storybrand is the

guide in tom hooper's academy award-winning film the king speech king george the vi struggles to overcome a stutter as britain prepares for the war against germany the brits look to their leader for confidence and direction desperate king george vi solicits the help of lionel logue a dramatist turned speech therapist who gives him a plan coaches him to competency and helps him transform into a powerful orator this is the same service obi-wan and yoda offers luke skywalker and star wars haymitch offers katniss in the hunger games and to some degree bing bong offers joy in pixar's

inside out it's no accident that guides show up in almost every movie nearly every human is being is looking for a guide or guides to help them win the day brands that position themselves as heroes unknowingly compete with their potential customers every human being wakes up each morning and sees the world through the lens of a protagonist the world revolves around us regardless of all how altruistic generous or selfless a person we may be each day is quite literally about how we encounter the world potential customers feel the same way about themselves they are the

center of their own world when a brand comes along and positions itself as the hero customers remain distant they hear about hear us talking about how great our business is and start wondering if we're competing with them for scarce resources their subconscious thought pattern goes like this oh hey this is another hero like me i wish i had more time to hear their story but right now i'm busy looking for a guide in the third part of the story brand framework we'll look at two mental triggers that will help customers recognize us as the guide

they've been looking for and number four who gives them a plan story brand principle number four customers trust a guide who has the plan at this point we've identified what the customer wants define three levels of problems they're encountering and position ourselves as their guide and our customers love us for their effort but they still aren't going to make a purchase why because they haven't laid out a simple plan of action that they can take making a purchase is a huge step especially if our products or services are expensive why uh what customers are looking

for then is a clear path we've laid out that takes away any confusion they might have about how to do business with us the story brand tool we will use to create this path is called the plan in almost every story the guide gives the hero a plan or a bit of information or a few steps they can use to get the job done in star wars movies yoda tells luke to trust the force and then trains luke on how to wield this power people are looking for a philosophy they can embody or a series

of steps they can take to solve their problems in the fourth part of the storybrand story brand framework we'll look at two kinds of plans the agreement plan and the process plan each of these plans will earn trust and offer our customers a clear path to stability greatly increasing the chances they will make a purchase and call number five and calls them to action story brand principle number five customers do not take action unless they are called or challenged to take action in stories challenged in stories characters don't take action on their own they must

be challenged if we're telling a story about a man who needs to lose 30 pounds and suddenly decides to do it because of his own volition the audience will check out why because that's not how life works there needs to be a reason our character has to run into high school sweetheart so who's now a yoga instructor or he needs to lose or he needs to lose a bet forcing him to run a marathon characters only take action after they are challenged by an outside force this principle is true in a story because it's true

in life human beings are take action when their story challenges them to do so you would be surprised how many companies don't create obvious calls to action for their customers a call to action involves communicating clear and direct step our customer can take to overcome their challenge to and return to a peaceful life without clear calls to action people will not engage our brand in the fifth part of the storybrand framework i'll show you two calls of action that have worked for thousands of our clients one call of action is discrete or is direct asking

the customer for a purchase or to schedule an appointment the other is a transitional call to action furthering our relationship with the customer once we begin using both kinds of calls to action in our messaging customers will understand exactly what we want them to do and decide whether to let us play a role in their story until we call our customers to action they simply watch us but when we call them to action the right way they will engage number six that helps them avoid failure story brand principle number six every human being is trying

to avoid a tragic ending stories lie live and die on a single question well it's at stake if nothing can be gained or lost nobody cares will the hero disarm the bomb or will people be killed will the guy get the girl or will he be lonely and filled with self-doubt these are the kinds of questions in the minds of a story hungry audience if there is nothing at stake in a story there is no story likewise there is nothing at stake in whether or not i buy your product i'm not going to buy your

product after all why should i simply put we must show people the cost of not doing business with us in the 80s the fast food chain wendy's effectively asked america where's the beef the implication was that their competitors weren't using enough meat so what's at stake for choosing another brand over wendy's we might get stuck with wimpy sandwich likewise whole foods has built an enormous industry helping customers avoid the consequences of overly processed foods and more recently trader joe's has come along to help customers avoid the consequences of whole foods prices brands that help customers

avoid some kind of negativity in life and let their customers know what the negativity is engage in customers for the same reason good stories captivate an audience they define what's at stake in the sixth part of the story brand framework i'll help you identify what's at stake in your customer story as it relates to your brand before we move on though it's important to note that not all of the seven elements should be used evenly in your communication think of the story brand framework as a recipe for a loaf of bread failure is like salt

use too much of it and you'll ruin the flavor leave it out and the recipe will be bland regardless the point of this your story needs steaks number seven and ends in a success story brand principle number seven number never assume people understand how your brand can change their lives tell them we must tell our customers how great their life can look if they buy our products and services ronald reagan painted a picture of shining city on of a shining city on our hall bill clinton offered to help us build a bridge to the 21st

century during the dark and dreary depression franklin roosevelt used the song happy days are here again as his official campaign song likewise apple provides tools that allow us to express ourselves and be heard weight watchers helps us lose weight and feel great the men's warehouse guarantees we will like the way we look everybody wants to be taken somewhere if we don't tell people where we're taking them they'll engage another brand in the seventh part of the story brand framework i'll elaborate on what it is perhaps the most important element of your messaging strategy offering a

vision for how a great customer's life could be if you if they engage your products or services when you feel confused clarify your message right about now your head may be spinning even though there are only seven parts to the framework how do we narrow down our messaging so our marketing material starts working again we've created a tool to simplify the process this tool is going to help reduce declare the hassle of creating a clear message save you time entertain you as you use it and motivate you to create marketing material that works as i

mentioned earlier this tool is called the story brand brand script and it's going to become your new best friend you can create your story brand brand script for free at mystorybrand.com and it looks like this so it's all in one page and in the next seven chapters i'm going to walk you through the these seven elements and help you create your brand script once you're done you'll no longer feel confused about how to talk to your product about how to talk about your products and services and you'll have messages that powerfully engage potential customers the

first project i'd like you to to brand script is the the first project i'd like you to brand script is the one that represents your overall brand next you'll want to create a brand script for each division of your company and after that each product within each division if you like you can even create a brand script for each segment of your customer base uh the the uses of a brand story brand brand script are endless again to create a brand script you can save edit and come back to over and over again go to

mystorybrand.com because you bought this book you get free access your story brand brand script will be a powerful resource helping you organize and simplifying your message and you'll use it again and again with the story brand brand script tool you'll you will be able to see your brand narrative on a single page which again will translate into a clear message you can use to grow your business clarifying your customer message so your customers will listen as you walk through the seven parts of the story brand framework simply follow these three steps read each part of

the read each of the next seven chapters after you read each chapter brainstorm potential messages you might use to populate your brand script three carefully look at your brainstorm and then decide on a specific message to use in each of your brand scripts once you complete your brand script at mystorybrand.com you will then have the basic messages to employ the sp7 framework on your website in your keynotes in your elevator pitches and all in in all manner of marketing and messaging collateral this means your messaging will be simple relevant and repeatable and remember simple clear

messages that are relevant to your customers result in sales every human being is already speaking the story of language of story so when you begin using the sp7 framework you'll finally begin speaking their language the stakes are high you're going to be tempted to move ahead and skip thinking deliberately about each of the next seven parts of the framework you've already got the store already got the brand script after all so why not just fill it out amateur screenwriters make the same mistake they think they know how a story works so they get start typing

and a couple of months later they can't figure out why their story is boring and unrelatable i'll tell you why they had an overview of the process but never bothered to learn the actual rules each module of the sb7 framework has set in stone rules that you cannot break or else someone or else customers won't find themselves in the story you're telling and will be much likely much less likely to engage your brand thousands of companies shut their doors every year not because they do not have a great product but because their potential customers can't

figure out how that product will make their lives better if we don't closely analyze each of each element of our customers story they'll sense we don't care and move on to competing brands that took the time to do the work some of you are probably thinking it's too late i mean if it's printed in a book everyone else is probably already doing it but are they how many people read the first 20 pages of a book and then stop reading it i'd say most which means you're already passing them what would it happen what would

happen if you committed to executing this process and your competitor didn't you'd win wouldn't you and how many people are actually going to put in the work even if they do read the book believe me human nature tends towards complacency finish this process beat the competition clarify your message grow your company the competition may be talented maybe more talented than you are but they will never outwork you if you don't let them that's the one thing you get to control in the next seven chapters i'll show you how to create a clear and compelling message

that will organize your thoughts simplify your marketing and grow your company section number two building your story brand [Music] when you're confused create a story brand brand script chapter 4 a character story brand principle number one the customer is the hero not your brand a story doesn't really pick up until the hero needs to disarm a bomb when someone's heart defeat a villain or fight for their emotional or physical survival a story starts with a hero who wants something and then the question becomes will the hero get what he or she wants before knowing what

that hero wants the audience has little interest in her fate this is why screenwriters have to define the character's ambition within the first nine or so minutes of the film getting started will the underdog get the promotion will the runner finish the marathon will the team win the championship these are the questions that keep an audience engaged for two hours as a brand it's important to define something your customer wants because as soon as we define our customer wants we posit a story question in the mind of our customers can this brand really help me

get what i want recently a high-end resort helped us declare recently a high-end resort hired us to help them clarify their message like many companies they were experiencing an identity crisis their marketing collateral featured images of their restaurant front desk and staff it all looked nice but unless they were trying to sell their buildings they weren't exactly inviting customers into a story what their customers wanted most of all actually was a luxurious restful experience after story branding their resort they changed the the text on their website from long stories about themselves which positioned them as

the hero to images of a warm bath plush towels robes someone getting a massage in the spa and looping clip of a back porch rocking chair against the back trees blowing in the wind along a golf course they replace the text on their main page with short and powerful copy find the luxury and rest you've been looking for that became the mantra for the entire staff this phrase was posted on their office walls and to this day you can stop by any of their team members from the souls chief to the groundskeeper and they will

tell you their customers are looking for two things luxury and rest defining exactly what their customer wanted brought clarity and camaraderie to their to the staff each member of the staff then understood his or her role in the story they were inviting their customers to engage in one university we worked with defined their customers message as a hassle-free mba you can complete after work a landscaping company humorously defined their customers ambition as a yard that looks better than your neighbors a caterer we worked with in los angeles defined his customers desire as a mobile fine

dining experience in the environment of your choice when we define when we identify something our customer wants and communicate it simply the story we are inviting them into is given the definition and direction here are some examples from companies we've worked with a financial advisor a plan for your retirement a college alumni association association leave a meaningful legacy fine dining restaurant a meal everybody will remember a real estate agent the home you've dreamed about bookstore the store a story to get lost in and breakfast bars a healthy start to your day when you define something

your customer wants the customer is invited to alter their story in your direction if they see your brand as trustworthy and a reliable guide they will likely engage and open a story gap in short terms identifying a story a potential desire for your customer opens what sometimes what is sometimes called a story gap the idea is that you place a gap between your character and what they want moviegoers pay attention when there's a story gap because they wonder if and how that gap is going to be closed jason bourne is a spy who has amnesia

and we wonder if he'll find anyone to help him when he meets a young woman named marie the gap closes only for another to open born and marie have to flee the country when they escape that gap closes for yet another one to open the cycle goes on and on maintaining a taut grip on the audience's attention and up until the finale to understand the power of a story gap is to understand what compels a human brain towards a desire even classical music follows this formula many many classical sonos can be broken into three sections

exposition development and rec re uh recapitulation recapitalization recapitulation the final section recapital recapitalism recapitulation is simply an altered version of the exposition that brings a sense of sense of resolve if that doesn't make sense try seeing twinkle twinkle little star without singing the final note [Music] without seeing the final note on the word are it will bother you to no end we also see see this in poetry work when we when our years hear lord byron's first line she walks in a beauty like the night a story gap has opened we are waiting to hear

a word that rhymes with night and closes the open gap in our minds once we hear of cloudless climes and starry nights our minds find a bit of resolution until the next line that is the opening and closing of a story gap is a magnetic force that drives much of our human behavior arousal is the opening of a story gap and success and sexual fulfillment bringing brings its closing hunger is the opening of a story gap and a meal ushers its closing there are little action in life that can be explained by the opening and

closing of various story gaps when we fail to define something our customer wants we fail to open a story gap when we don't open a story gap in our customers minds they have no motivation to engage us because there is no question that demands resolution defining something our customer wants and featuring it in our marketing materials will open a story gap pair down the customer's ambition to a single focus a critical mistake many organizations make is defining something their customers want is they don't pare down that desire to a single focus i've had countless conversations

with frustrated business leaders who push back at this point and say wait we provided a 27 we provided about 27 things our customers want can't we mention all of them the answer is no at least not yet until we've defined a specific desire and become known for helping people achieve it um we shouldn't add too many conflicting story gaps to our brand story brand brand script this can be frustrating if your product if your pr if your products and services fulfill too many desires the reality of a diverse brand uh the reality of a diverse

brand through though brings this can be frustrating if your products and services fulfill too many desires the reality of a diverse brand though brings the same challenge to many amateur screenwriters that they succumb to the clutter of the story by diluting their hero's desire with too many ambitions as you create a brand script for your overall brand focus on one simple desire and then as you create campaigns for each division and maybe even product you can identify more things your customers want in the subplots of your overall brand on the following page you'll find a

grid of what a diverse brand might look like using the various story brand brand scripts at the highest level the most important challenge for business leaders is to define something they and rel relevant their customers want to become known for and delivering on that promise every else everything else is a subplot to that after having delivered on the big customers basic desire will only serve to delight and surprise them all the more choose a desire relevant to their survival once a brand defines what their customers wants they often are guilty of making the second mistake

they what they've defined isn't related to the customer's sense of survival in their desire to cast out a wide net they define a blob of a desire that is so vague potential customers can't figure out why they need it in the first place a leadership expert recently asked for feedback on his brand as i reviewed his marketing material i noticed he was making a critical mistake and defining what his customers wanted he was vague the idea behind his brand is that he imparts knowledge to potential leaders he saw himself as a storehouse of leadership resources

and wanted to be the go-to guy for achieving excellence in fact his tagline was inhale knowledge exhale success seems clear enough but is it what does exhaling success even mean he was making a potential customer burn too many calories to figure out what he was going to help them survive and thrive i recommended he make an edit to his message instead of saying inhale knowledge exhale 6 says simply say helping you become everyone's favorite leader becoming everyone's favorite leader means the customer would be more respected and better connected to a tribe they'd have a greater

social and career opportunities and much more exhaling success sounded nice but a thriving as a leader of a tribe is more directly connected to survival people will always choose a story that helps them survive and thrive fortunately he likes the idea mostly because that's what he was already doing defining something the customer wants and connecting it with the customer's desire for survival opened an enticing story gap what does survival mean when i say survival i'm talking about that primitive desire we all have to be safe healthy happy and strong survival simply means we have the

economic and social resources to eat drink reproduce and fend off foes so what kind of desires fit under this definition well too many to count but consider these examples conserving financial resources in order to survive and thrive your customers may need to conserve resources in simple terms this means they may need to save money if your brand can help them save money you've tapped into a survival mechanism walmart has built their brand on the promise of everyday load prices their tagline save money live better further communicate savings and value and thus taps into a basic

function of survival the conservation of resources conserving time in developed countries most of our customers have thankfully moved beyond the hunger hunter-gatherer stages of survival they are familiar then with the notion of opportunity cost can your house cleaning service give your customers more time to work on other things or more time to spend with family then they might be interested building social networks if our brand can help us find community we've tapped into yet another survival mechanism we've only we've only been thi we've only we only think we're being nice when we bring our co-workers

coffee but what if we're actually being nice because our primitive brain wants to make sure we are connected to a tribe and in case the bad guys come knocking at the door add this to the fact that the human beings have a strong desire to nurture and be nurtured and we've tapped into yet another survival mechanism gaining status luxury brands like mercedes and rolex don't make much practical sense in terms of survival right in fact spending lots of money on buying a luxury car when a more common brand would do the trick seems counter to

survival doesn't it not when you consider the importance of status status in any tribe is a survival mechanism it projects a sense of an abundance and may attract powerful allies repel potential foes like a lion with a loud roar and if we're into shallow companions might even help us secure a mate rolex mercedes louis vuitton and other luxury brands are more truly selling more than just cars and watches they're selling in an identity associated with power prestige and refinement accumulating resources if the products and services you offer people help people make money or accumulate much

needed resources that will quickly translate into a person's desire for survival with no more money with more money our customers will have more opportunity to secure many of the other survival resources they may need many story brand clients run b2b offerings story brand itself is a business-to-business company so many so offering instead increased productivity increase revenue or decrease ways are powerful associations with the need for a business or an individual to survive and thrive the innate desire to be generous none of these desires i've listed are evil they can all be taken too far but

the reality is we are all desert we is we are all designed to survive still should we uh still we should be comforted by the fact that nearly all human beings have an enormous potential for generosity achieving an aspirational identity of being sacrificial actually helps us survive fend off foes decrease outside criticism helps earn trust in our tribe and so on but it also tops into something truly redemptive we want other people to survive too most people are not nearly as darwinian in their thinking as we've been led to believe we are empathetic and caring

creatures who will gladly sacrifice for the well-being of others often in anonymity the truth is we aren't only interested in our own survival we're interested in the survival of others especially those who have not been given the opportunities we enjoy the desire for meaning victor frankel was right when he contended that with sigmund freud insinuating that the chief desire of man is not pleasure but meaning in fact in his book man's search for meaning franco argued convincingly that the man was actually more tempted to distract himself with pleasure when life was void of meaning so

how do we often how do we offer potential customers a sense of meaning not unlike giving customers the potential opportunity to be generous we invite them to participate in something greater than themselves of movement a cause to champion a valiant fight against real villain be that villain flesh and blood or harmful philosophy what's the story for what's the story question for your customer when i offered my executive coach friend the tagline helping you become the leader everybody loves his customers brains were able to translate that message into multiple survival categories including social networks status and

the innate desire to be generous and the opportunity to gain resources and even the desire for deep deeper meaning in business we don't communicate clearly we shrink when we're motivating a team convincing shareholders or engaging customers we we must define a desire our customers have or we will have failed to open up a story gap our audience will ignore us remember customers want to know where you can take them unless you identify something they want it's doubtful they will listen imagine your customer is a hitchhiker you pull over to give him a ride and then

one burning question on his mind is simply where are you going but as he approaches you roll down the window and start talking about your mission statement about how your grandfather built his car with his bare hands or how you road trip playlist is all 1980s alternative the person doesn't care all he wants to do is get to san francisco with a flower in its hair the goal for our branding should be that every potential customer knows exactly where we want to take them a luxury resort where they can get some rest to become the

leader everybody loves or to save money and live better if you randomly asked a potential customer where your brand wants to take them would they be able to answer would they be able to repeat back to you exactly what your brand offers if not your brand is suffering the cost of confusion you can fix this define a desire for your customer and the story you've inviting your customers into will have a powerful hook [Music] here it sends go to storebrand.com and fill out the storybrand brand script chapter 5 has a problem story brand principle number

two companies tend to sell solutions to external problems but customers buy solutions to internal problems now you've entered into your customer story how do you increase their interest in your brand you borrow another play from a storyteller's playbook you start talking about the problems your customers face identifying your customers problem deepens their interest in the story we are telling every story is about somebody who is trying to solve a problem so we identify our customers problems they recognize us as a brand that understands them the problem is the hook of a story and if we

don't identify our customers problems the story we are telling will fall flat as soon as the conflict is in a story is resolved audiences stop paying attention as the novelist james scott bell says readers want to fret it is true in a story and it's true in branding if jason bourne were to get a call 30 minutes into the first born identity movie and gentle calming voice began to explain who jason really was why he'd suffer amnesia and that the government was offering him a pension along with the house on the coast then no one

would keep watching the reason to pay attention would be gone it bears repeating the more people the more we talk about the problems in our customers experience the more interest they will have in our brand how to talk about your customers problems in the second module of the story brand framework we're going to look at three elements of conflict that will increase customers interest ratchet up engagement and give a deeper depth of meaning into to the story our brand is telling first let's look at the start of the route where all of this conflict is

coming from i'm talking about one of the most dynamic interests and interesting characters in any story the villain every story needs a villain the villain is the number one device storytellers use to give a conflict a clear point of focus screen writers and novelists know the stronger more evil and more gas dastardly the villain the more sympathy we will have for the hero and the more the audience will want them to win in the end this translates into audience engagement how sympathetic would batman be without the joker luke skywalker without vader harry potter without voldemort

and superman without the kryptonite let's be honest lex looser isn't that interesting of a bad guy if we want our customers ears to perk up when we are talking about our products and services we should position those products and services as weapons that they can use to defeat a villain and the villain should be dastardly the villain doesn't have to be a person but without a question it should have personified characteristics if we're selling time management software for example we might vilify the idea of distractions could we offer our product that could a weapon that

could be used to stop distractions in its tracks sounds dramatic right yet distractions are what we're diluting our from our customers customers potential wrecking their families stealing their sanity and costing them enormous amounts of money and time distractions then make for great little fill-ins now that i've pointed out the technique of vilifying our customers challenges you'll see it in a television commercial and all of the time who knew that those dust bunnies collecting up along the baseboards of your house move around and animated in criminal efforts in gangs wearing leather jackets coordinating their devilish efforts

to ruin our floors ah until they met their match from the new mop company acme mop company advertisers perform personify the problems their customers face in order to capture their imagination to give their frustrations a focal point fuzzy hairy balls with squeaky voices living in your drains making nests and clogging up their pipes yellow globs of living breathing talking plake plaque vacationing between your teeth these are all personified versions of conflict they're all villains here are so here are four basic characteristics that make for a good villain on your story brand script number one the

villain should be a the villain should be a root source frustration for example is not a villain frustration is what the villain makes us feel high taxes however are a good villain the villain should be relatable when people hear us talking about the villain they should be immediately recognized as something they disdain the villain should be singular one villain is enough a story with too many villains falls apart for a lack of clarity the villain should be real never go down the path of being a fear monger there are plenty of actual villains out there

to fight let's go after them on our behalf of our customers is there a villain in your customers story of course there is what is the chief source of conflict that your products and services defeat let's talk about this villain the more you talk about the villain the more people will want a tool to help them defeat the villain later when you're creating your brand script i'll ask you to brainstorm what your kind of villain your customers faces for now though let's look closely at the kinds of conflicts this villain causes once we understand our

customers problems we'll have a better idea on how to talk to them in such a way that they engage the three levels of conflict a villain is an antagonist because the villain causes the hero serious problems that's obvious but what's less obvious is that in the story there are three levels of problems that work together to capture a reader's or movie gore's imagination the three levels of problems the hero encounters our customer is external problems internal problems and philosophical problems in a story a villain initiates an external problem that causes this character to experience an

internal frustration that is quite simply philosophically wrong these are the three levels of a problem that customers hope to solve when they buy a product i know that sounds complicated but let's take a closer look at each level of conflict so we know exactly which of our customers frustrations to talk to as we simplify and clarify our message external problems in literature a villain's job is to wreak havoc on the hero to place barriers between them and their desperate desire for stability but ill intentions aren't enough something that is something that is something or things

that represent this barrier external enter the external problem in stories the external problem is often a physical tangible problem the hero must overcome in order to save the day the problem might manifest itself as a ticking time bomb or as a one runaway bus or maybe even the combination of the two a bomb on a bus that will go off if keanu reeves doesn't keep the speed above 50 miles per hour the external problem works like a pi a prized chess piece to set between the hero and the villain and each is trying to control

the piece so that they can win the game for billy being in the movie moneyball the external problem is the need to win baseball games for matthew bodrick in the movie war games it's a piece of rogue software that has taken over the american government's computer system and attempts to wage war on the soviets but what does but what does the existence of an external problem in a story have to do with branding well most of us are in business of solving external problems we provide insurance or clothes or soccer balls if we own a

restaurant the external problem we solve is hunger the external problem of polymer fixes might be a leaky pipe just like a pest control guide might solve the external problem of termites in the attic brainstorming what external problems you solve will be the easiest part of creating your story brand brand script it's usually pretty obvious you'd be wrong to think of the reason people call you but you'd be wrong to think of the reason people called you through the door walk walk through the door or visit your website is limited to the resolution of external problem

something else is going on internal problems by limiting our marketing message to only external problems we neglect a principle that is costing us thousands of potentially millions of dollars that principle is companies tend to sell solutions to an external problems but people buy solutions to internal problems the purpose of an external problem in a story is to manifest the internal prop to manifest an internal problem if i wrote a movie about a guy who simply needed to disarm a bomb audiences would lose interest but what about what storytellers and screenwriters do then is they create

a backstory of frustration in the hero's life in the movie moneyball for instance billy bean failed in his first playing career so was filled with self-doubt about whether he could redeem himself as a general manager in star wars luke skywalker was told by by his uncle that he was too young to join the resistance so he doubted his ability until the very end in almost every story the hero struggles with the same question do i have what it takes this question can be can make them feel frustrated incompetent and confused the sense of self-doubt is

what makes a movie about baseball relatable to a soccer mom and a romantic comedy related to a truck driving husband what stories teach us is that people's internal desire to resolve a frustration is greater than the motivator than the desire to solve an external problem this is where most brands make a critical mistake by assuming our customers only want to solve resolve external problems we fail to engage the deeper story they're actually living the truth is the external problems we solve are causing frustrations in their lives and just like in a story it's those frustrations

that are motivating them to call you after their near collapse apple didn't find their footing until steve jobs understood that people felt intimidated inter internal problem by computers and wanted a simpler interface with technology in one of the most powerful advertising campaigns in history apple showed a simple hip fun character who just wanted to take photos and listen to music and write books in a net not so tech and a not so hip tech nerd who wanted to talk about the inner workings of his operating system the campaign positioned ample computers as the company to

go to if you wanted to enjoy life and express yourself but it felt intimidated by all the tech talk what was the internal problem apple identified a sense of intimidate a sense of intimidation most people felt about computers apple started selling more than computers they started selling a reason a resolution to the problem of customers intimidation understanding their customers internal problem is one of the reasons apple achieved such growth and created passionate brand evangelists the only reasons our customers buy from us is because the external problem we solve is frustrating them in some way if

we can identify their frustration and put into words and offers to resolve it along with the original external problem something special happens we bond with our customers because we positioned ourselves more deeply into their narrative for example if we own a house painting business our external customers external problem might be an unsightly home the internal problem however may be may involve a sense of embarrassment about having the ugliest home on the street knowing this our marketing could offer paint that will make your home make your neighbors jealous what frustrations do our products resolve recently the

rental car company national got my business by got my business by understanding my internal frustration i used to rent from a company that got on my nerves normally when i get off a plane i don't feel like making small talk the staff at the company i used to rent cars from had a policy of chit-chatting with their customers they even used the script first they asked whether i was in town for business or pleasure then they asked about whether i where about the weather where i came from and on and on it went i heard

about this script so many times i started having fun beating them into their own talking points i'd i'd often jump ahead on their script and ask the clerk are you going to be able to have a little down time uh while you're in town are you going to be able to have a little down time while you're in town and they just stare blankly at me because i hijacked their line one day though i was uh watching television and a commercial came on for national it showed a guy walking through the rental car office without

talking to anybody the character talked about how he hated having to make conversation with salespeople and how he loved walking straight to his car i immediately changed rental car companies and have been happy ever since speaking of car companies carmax is a chain of used car dealerships that aims most of their marketing collateral at solving the internal problem a customer experiences when looking for a used car namely having to interact with a used car salesman if you've ever walked onto a used car sales lot you know the feeling as if you're going to tangle with

a professional wrestler knowing their customers don't want to haggle over prices or risk buying a lemon carmax's business strategy is aimed at having you not feel lied to cheated to or worked over in your car buying experience to do this to have an agreement in place with their customer that ensures the price they have on the car is the price you'll pay and lets them lets you know their sales people aren't compensated on commission they also highlight their quality certification and inspection process that ensures every car they sell is reliable the external problem carmax solves

is the need for a car but of course they hardly advertise about cars at all they focus on solving their customers internal problem and in doing so entered into one of the least trusted industries in america and created a 15 billion dollar franchise likewise starbucks exploded by not just offering customers a cup of coffee but by giving them a comfortable sophisticated environment in which to relax customers felt good about themselves when they walked into starbucks starbucks was delivering more than just coffee they were delivering a sense of sophistication enthusiasm about life they were also offering

a place for people to meet in which they could experience affiliation and belonging starbucks changed america culture from hanging out in dinner and diners and bars to hanging out in a local italian style coffee shop in understanding how their customers wanted to feel starbucks took a product that americans used to paying 50 cents for one one or drinking almost for free at home artwork and were able to charge three or four dollars per cup starbucks are willing to pay more for their coffee because they sense a greater value with each cup framing our products as

a resolution to both an external and internal problem increases the perceived value and i would argue the actual value of those products later i'll guide you through a brainstorming exercise helping you identify some of your customers internal problems but before that let's look at this third kind of problem in our customers experience this third kind of problem can take our story over to the top and have audiences standing on their seats and is one of the main reasons a film will win best picture at the academy awards and has the same kind of power when

it comes to helping us turn disinterested customers into brand fanatics philosophical problems the physical the philosophical problem in a story is about something even larger than the story itself it's the question why why does the story matter in the overall epic of humanity why why is it important that tommy boy save his dad's company well i'll tell you why because the people trying to take tommy boyd down are lying thieves this is a comedic story about honesty family integrity and hard work versus deception greed and trickery why is it important that hamlet avenge his father's

death because his uncle is getting away with murder why is it important that bridget jones find love because the beauty and worth of every person deserves to be recognized and cherished by another a philosophical problem can be best talked about by using terms like odds and shouldn't bad people shouldn't be allowed to win people ought to be treated fairly in the movie the king's speech the external problem is kings the king george's stutter the external problem manifests the internal problem and self-doubt the king struggles with he simply doesn't believe he has what it takes to

lead the country philosophically though the stakes are much greater because the king must unify his people against the nazis the story takes on the philosophical problem of good versus evil in jerry magazine the philosophical question resolves around whether people are worth more than the money they can bring in romeo and juliet ask whether romantic love is more important than family squabbles and tribal unrest what's the deeper meaning people want to be involved in a story that is larger than themselves brands that give them that give customers a voice in a larger narrative add value to

their products and giving their customers a deeper sense of meaning after creating their brand script a global consulting firm we worked with began to talk about how everybody deserved to work for a great manager a pet store who owner who came to a toucan hung a sign in our window said pets deserve to eat healthy food too a fun loving travel agent came to us and adopted the see the person the seasonal line because this summer should be remembered forever before music went digital tower records promoted their chain of record stores using the tagline no

music no life not only did the tagline help them sell more than a billion dollars in records each year but they sold thousands of bumper stickers and t-shirts featuring the tagline to fans who wanted to be associated with the philosophical belief that music mattered is there a deeper story your brand contributes to can you can your products be positioned as tools your customers can use to fight back against something that ought not to be if so let's let's include some philosophical stakes in our messaging the perfect brand promise if we really want to satisfy satisfy

our customers we can offer much more than products and services we can offer a resolution to external internal and philosophical problem whenever they engage our business storytellers use this story this formula to endear audiences all the time when luke shoots the photon torpedo through the little hole in the death star he actually resolves the external problem of destroying the death star the internal problem that had him wondering whether he had what it takes to be a jedi and the philosophical problem of good versus evil all with the press of a button when all of these

three problems are resolved in one shot the audience experiences a sense of pleasure and relief causing them to love the story this scene is often called the climatic or obligatory scene and is arguably the most important scene in the movie because every other scene builds towards it in some way the resolution of the hero's external internal and philosophical problem is the reason we cried when woody and buzz were reunited with andy and toy story and it's the why we felt so deeply when private ryan was rescued by captain john miller this formula works because human

beings experience three levels of problems in their everyday life they aren't just looking for a resolution to one level a problem they're looking they're hoping for a resolution to all three if we really want our business to grow we should position our products as the resolution to an external internal and philosophical problem and frame the buy now button as the action a customer must take to create a closure in the story let's look at how some successful brands we all know about have positioned the purchasing of their products as the resolution to external internal and

philosophical problems tesla motor cars villain gas guzzling inferior technology the villain is the gas guzzling ice the external problem is you need a car internal i want to be an early adopter of new technology in a philosophical my car my choice of car ought to help save the environment nespresso home coffee machines the coffee machines that make bad coffee is the villain external problem is you want better tasting coffee at home the internal problem is i want my coffee machine to make me feel sophisticated and the philosophical problem is i shouldn't have to be a

barista to make a gourmet coffee at home edward joins financial planning financial firms that don't listen to their customers is the villain external problem is i need investment help internal problem is i'm confused about how to do this especially with all the tech driven resources out there the philosophical problem if i'm going to invest my money i deserve an advisor who will thoughtfully explain things in person what challenges you are helping your customers overcome the idea of identifying a villain is that is causing an external internal and philosophical problem it may seem daunting but it

will come to you if you commit to working out in a brainstorming session but be careful a large problem is that most of our clients face they want to include all three villains and seven external problems and four internal problems and so on but as i've already mentioned the stories are best when they are simple and clear and we're gonna have to make hard choices is there a single villain in your brand store is there a single villain your brand stands against and how and what external problem that villain is causing how how is that

external problem making your customers feel and why is it unjust for people to have to suffer at the hands of this villain these are the four questions we want to answer in the next in the problem section of our story brand brand script and when we do the story our brand will tell is will take shape because our hero the customer who wants to solve something is being challenged will they win will their problems be resolved perhaps this is the thing they have to engage your brand to find out chapter six and meets a guide

story brand principle number three customers aren't looking for another hero they're looking for a guide shakespeare was right a person's life is made up of many acts and as a book writer though i prefer to see these acts as chapter chapters if you look back on your life you'll likely see them too there is a chapter when you grew up poor in the chapter where you became to understand the importance of relationships there's a chapter when you realize you were good at math or sports and then there was a chapter where you left home to

start out on your own no two lives are the same and yet we share common chapters every human being is on a transformational journey it's easy to recognize these chapters by their events or what writer and story scholar james scott bell calls doorways of no return these might have been our parents divorce our our first crush a rejection from somebody we love or having absolutely nailed the moonwalk when the crowd gathered around us at the junior high dance in stories events marking the beginning or endings of our chapters but if we look closer we will

see something else or something more accurately somebody else the events that define our chapters are often instigated or interpreted by the mystical chapters characters that help us along the way in the story there are many names for these characters but i choose to call them a guide in this book the seven basic plots christopher booker describes the introduction of the guide into the story in this way a hero ohioan falls in under a stark spell which eventually traps them in some wintry state akin to living death physical or spiritual imprisonment sleep sickness or some other

form of enchantment for a long time they languish in this frozen condition then a miraculous act of redemption takes place focused on a particular figure who helps to liberate the hero or heroine from imprisonment from the depths of the darkness they are brought up into the glorious light every hero is looking for a guide when i talk about a guide i'm talking about a mother or father when they sat us down and talked about integrity or a football coach who helped us understand the importance of working hard and believing we could accomplish more than we

could ever thought possible guides might include the author of poems we've read leaders who moved the world in into new territory therapists who helped us make sense of our problems and yes even brands that offered us encouragement and tools to help us overcome challenges if a hero solves her own problem in a story the audience will tune out why because we intuitively know if she could solve her own problem she wouldn't have gone into trouble in the first place storytellers used the guide character to encourage the hero and equip them to win the day you've

also you've also seen the guide in nearly every story you've read listened to or watched frodo has gandalf katniss says hey mitch and luke skywalker has yoda hamlet was guided by his father's ghost and romeo was taught the ways of love by juliet just like in stories humans human beings wake up in every morning self-identifying as a hero they are troubled by internal external and philosophical problems and they know they can't solve these problems on their own the fatal mistake some brands make especially young brands who believe they need to prove themselves is positioned themselves

as the hero in the story instead of the guide as i've already mentioned a brand that positions itself as the hero is destined to lose the fatal mistake the fatal ramifications of positioning our brand as a hero could be huge consider the failure of the music streaming service title never heard of it there's a good reason rapper jay-z founded the company with a personal investment of a whopping 56 million dollars with a mission to get everyone to respect music again instead of being owned by music studios or tech companies title would be owned by musicians

allowing them to cut out the middleman and take their products directly to the market as a result the artists would pocket more of the profits sounds like a great plan but jay-z failed to consider the mistake of positioning himself and other artists as the heroes were were artists going to buy music from each other no he needed to position the customer not the artist as the hero in the months leading up to the launch a title jay-z recruited 16 well-known musicians who agreed to release exclusive content on the platform in exchange for a percentage of

equity in their multi-million dollar rollout the artist stood shoulder to shoulder at a press conference to explain their mission predicted predictably this was where everything fell apart if only jay-z and other if only jay-z in other ways a virtual genius had understood the age-old rules of stories he would have made avoided walking into a field of land mines water is for you jay-z equipped music is six dollars but no one wants to pay for music he continued somewhat confusingly you should drink water for free from the tap it's a beautiful thing and if you want

to hear the most beautiful song then support the artist social media especially twitter eviscerated jay-z and title thousands reminded him to check with the people who paid his bills to discover that water actually discovered water isn't wasn't actually free overnight an artist who built his career speaking for people sounded entitled the music became nauseated the public became nauseated listening to a row of famous multi-millionaire musicians guilt-tripped them into paying more for their music the crucial mistake jay-z failed to answer was one question lingering in the subconscious of every hero customer how are helping you how

are you helping me win the day title existed to help the artists win the day not the customers and so it failed always position your customer as the hero and your brand as the guide always if you don't you will die the story is not about us the larger point here is simple the day we stop losing sleep over the cusp the success of our business and start losing sleep over the success of our customers is the day our business will start growing again if we are tempted to position our brand as the hero because

heroes are strong and capable and the center of attention we should take a step back in stories the hero is never the strongest character heroes were often nearly equipped and filled with self-doubt they don't know if they have what it takes they are often reluctant being thrown into a story rather rather than willingly engaging the plot the guide however has already been there and done that and has conquered the heroes challenge in their own backstory the guide not the hero is the one with the most authority still the story is rarely the story is rarely

about the guide the guide simply plays a role the story must always be focused on the hero and if the storyteller or business leader forgets this the audience will get confused about who the story is really about and they will lose interest this is true in business in politics and even in your own family people who are looking for a guide to help them not another hero those who realize the epic story of life is not about them but actually about the people around them somehow win in the end it's counterintuitive but it's true in

fact leaders who think the story of life is all about them may achieve temporary successes but are usually remembered in history narrative as a villain the two characters do characteristics of a guide we have seen hundreds if not thousands of business experts experience an increase in customer engagement once they started positioning themselves as a guide after filtering their message to the story brand framework business leaders realize their websites email blast digital ads and television commercials and even their elevator pitches may have been facing the wrong direction simply turning turning our focus on to the customer

and offering them a heroic role and a meaningful story is enough to radically change the way we talk about and even do business so what do we have to do to be recognized as the guide in our customers lives the two things a brand must communicate to position themselves as a guide are empathy and authority when luke skywalker meets yoda he encounters the pers the perfect per guide yoda is endearing character who understands luke's dilemma and empathetically coaches him to use the force this empathy would go nowhere of course were it not for yoda's authority

and as jedi himself yoda understands luke's dilemma and mastered the skills luke must develop if he is going to win the day the guide must have must have this precise one-two punch of empathy and authority in order to move the hero along the story these are the characteristics the hero is looking for and when she senses them she knows she's found her guide express empathy when bill clinton delivered his now famous i feel your pain in 1992 he did more than just a clinch of victory over george h.w bush he positioned himself as the guide

in america's voters story a guide expressing an understanding of the pain and frustration of the hero in fact many pundits believe clinton locked up the election during a town hall debate in which bush gave a rambling answer to a woman when she asked what the national debt meant to the average what the national debt meant to the average american clinton countered bush's linear cerebral answer by asking if the woman if she knew anybody who'd lost their job he asked whether it painted he asked whether it painted her that it pained her that she had friends

out of work and when the woman said yes he went on to explain how the national debt is tied to the well-being of every american even her and her friends that's empathy when we empathize with our customers dilemma we created a bond of trust people trust those who understand them and trust brands that understand them too oprah winfrey and undeniably successful guide to millions once explained three things every human being must every human being wants most are to be seen heard and understood if you this is the essence of empathy empathetic statements start with words

like we understand how it feels to nobody should have to experience or like you we are frustrated by or in case one toyota commercial inviting toyota owners to engage their local toyota service center simply saying we care about your toyota expressing empathy isn't difficult once we've identified our customers internal problems we simply need to let them know we understand and would like to help them find a resolution scan your marketing material and make sure you've told your customers that you care customers won't know you care until you've told them are you like me empathy is

more than just sentimental slogans though real empathy means letting customers know we see them as we see ourselves customers look for brands they must have something in common with remember the human brain likes to conserve calories so when a customer realizes they have a lot in common with a brand they fill in all the unknown nuances with trust essentially the customer batches their thinking meaning they're thinking in chunks rather than details commonality weather taste and music or shared values is a powerful marketing tool a recent discover card television campaign tapped into the power of empathy

by featuring people who called customer service and ended up talking to an exact replica of themselves the message discover card will take care of you the same way you would take care of yourself demonstrate authority nobody likes a know-it-all and nobody wants to be preached at brands that lord their expertise over the masses turn to people turn people off for this reason many marketing experts say we shouldn't express authority at all that what people want is a brand that puts their arm around their customers and shoulders and walks alongside them as an equal but this

isn't completely true imagine walking into a nutrition office and for the first time determined to get in the best of your life i'd like to lose 30 pounds you tell her it's been a struggle for me for a long time but i'm ready what would you do if the nurse if the nutritionist looked at you and said me too it wouldn't take you long to realize you've chosen the wrong nutritionist when i talk about an authority i'm really talking about competence when looking for a guide a hero trusts somebody who knows what they're doing the

guy doesn't have to be perfect but the guy needs to have serious experience helping the heroes win at the end of the day so how do we express our authority without bragging about ourselves so much that we step into the role of the hero as customers view our websites commercials or emails they simply want to check a box off in their minds that gives them ability gives them confidence in our ability to help them the there are four easy ways to add just the right amount of authority in our marketing one testimonials let others do

the talking for you if you have satisfied customers place a few testimonials on your website testimonials give potential customers the gift of going second they know others have already worked with you and attained success avoid stacking 10 to 20 testimonials otherwise you run the risk of positioning yourself as a hero 3 is a great number to start with and will serve the need most customers have to make sure that you know what you're doing also avoid rambling testimonials that keep endless praise on your brand it won't take long for a customer to trust you so

keep a testimonial brief two statistics how many satisfied customers have you helped how much money have you helped them save by what percentage have their business grown since started working with you a simple statement like an email platform with infusionsoft's 125 000 125 000 users are blank award-winning automation software as all your potential customers need moreover this scratches this itch of the left brain consumer who loves numbers statistics and facts awards if you've won a few awards for your work feel free to include small logos or indications of those words at the bottom of your

page again there's no need to make them big but a word to go a long way in earning your customers stress even if they've never heard of the award logos if you provide a business to business product or service place the logos of known businesses you've worked with in your marketing collateral customers want to know you've helped other businesses overcome their same challenges when they recognize another business you've worked with it provides social proof you have to and the ability to help them win the day take a minute to scan your marketing material and ask

yourself whether you've demonstrated competency remember you don't have to brag about yourself testimonials logos awards and statistics will allow customers to check the trust box in the back of their minds the questions they're asking themselves are does this brand know what they're doing is investing my time and money going to be worth it can this they really help me solve my problem how to make a great first impression when people meet your brand it's as though they're meeting a person they're wondering if the two of you will get along whether you can help them live

a better life and whether ultimately they want to associate their identity with your brand and ultimately whether they can trust you a harvard business professor amy cuddy has spent more than 15 years studying how business leaders can make a positive first impression cuddy distilled her research into two questions people subconsciously ask when meeting someone new can i trust this person and can i respect this person in her book presence cudi explains human beings value trust so highly it's often after trust is established that a person begins to consider getting to know us further whether we

express empathy we help our customers answer when we express empathy we help our customers answer cuddy's first question can i trust this person demonstrating competence helps our customers answer the second question can i respect this person the sec the same two characteristics that help us make a great first impression with people at a cocktail party also work to help our brand make a great first impression with potential customers once we express empathy and demonstrate authority we can position our brand as the guide our customers have been looking for this will make a significant difference in

the way they remember us understand us and ultimately engage with our products and services that said even though our customers like us and trust us it doesn't mean that they're going to place an order there's still a yawning chasm between the customers affection and their decision to invest their hard-earned money in in what we're offering what are they looking for next we'll talk about it in the next chapter for now brainstorming how can you position yourself as a guide in your customer's life by expressing empathy and demonstrating authority chapter seven who gives them a plan

a story brand principle four four customers trust a guide who has a plan at this point in the customer's journey we've identified something they want which has gotten the story started then we've identified their problems which and created intrigue as to whether or not we can help them overcome their challenges then we introduced ourselves as the guide by expressing empathy and demonstrating authority which established trust and yet even with all this their customer isn't going to place an order yet there's still something missing if we positioned ourselves as the guide our customers are already in

a relationship with us but making a purchase isn't a characteristic of a casual relationship it's a characteristic of a commitment when a customer places an order they're essentially saying i believe you can help me solve my problem and i believe it's so much i'm willing to put skin in the game i'm willing to put depart with my hard earned dollars commitments are risky for our customers because as soon as they make a commitment they can lose everything most customers are not going to take the risk yet when a customer is deciding on whether to buy

something or whether we should uh we should picture them standing on the edge of a rushing creek a russian creek it's true they want what's on the other side but as they stand there they ha they hear a waterfall downstream what happens if they fall into the creek what would life look like if they went over those falls these are the kinds of questions our customers subconsciously ponder as they hover their little arrow over the buy now button what if it doesn't work what if i am a fool for buying this in order to ease

our customers concerns we need to place large stones in that creek we've identified our stone we've identified the stones our customers can step on and to get across the creek we remove much of the risk in increasing the comfort level of doing business with us it's as though we're saying first step here see it's easy then step here then you'll be on the other side and your problem will be solved in the story brand framework we refer to these stones as a plan in the movie moneyball peter brand the bride gives billy bean a plan

he can employ to turn his baseball team around in a series of small steps billy will be using an algorithm to choose players rather than relying on an anecdotal evidence from his antiquated coaching staff he's going to begin to trust the numbers and to run the team the way a hedge fund manager might run his hedge fund in nearly every movie you can think of the guide gives a hero a plan the plan is a bridge the hero must cross in order to arrive at a climactic scene rocky has to gain to train using non-traditional

methods tommy boy has to embark on a national sales trip julia must drink the potion of the apathar carthy gives her in order to trick her family into thinking she's died and to be free with romeo the plan tightens the focus of the movie and gives the hero a path of hope she can walk that might lead to the resolution of her troubles the plan creates clarity plans can take many shapes and forms but all effective marketing plans do one of two things they either clarify how somebody can do business with us or they remove

the sense of risk somebody might have if they are considering investing in to do our products or services remember the mantra if you confuse you'll lose not not having a plan is a guaranteed way to confuse your customers after potential customers listen to uh to us give a keynote or visit a webpage or read an email blast we've sent they've all wondering the same thing what do you want me to do now if we don't guide them they're exp they they experience a little bit of confusion and because they can hear that waterfall downstream they

use that confusion as an excuse not to do business with us the fact that we want them to place an order is not enough information to motivate them if we're selling a storage system a customer can install in their garage they hover over that buy now button subconsciously wondering if it will work for them how hard it will be to install and whether it will sit unopen in their garage boxes like the last thing they bought but when we spell out how easy the whole thing is to set up and let them know that they

can get started in three easy steps they are more likely to place an order we must tell them in order to measure their space order the items that fit and install in minutes using the basic tools even though these steps may seem obvious they aren't obvious to the customers placing stones in the creek greatly increases the chance they will cross the creek the process plan at storybrand we've identified two plans you can use to effectively encourage your customers to do business with you the first kind of plan the one we recommend every one of our

clients employ is a process plan a process plan can describe the steps a customer needs to take to buy our product or the steps a customer needs to take to use our product after they buy it or a mixture of both for instance if you're selling an expensive product you might break it down into the steps like one schedule appointment two allow us to create a customized plan and three let's execute the plan together whether we're selling a financial product a medical procedure a university education or any other complicated solution a process plan takes the

confusion out of the customer's journey and guides them in the next steps so far i've talked mostly about the stones we can place in the creek that lead our customers to make to make a purchase but another kind of process plan would be the post purchase process plan a post purchase process plan is best used when our customers might have problems imagining how they would use our product after they buy it for instance with a complicated piece of software we might want to spell out all the steps or even the phases a customer would take

after they make the purchase one download the software to integrate into your database into our system and three revolutionize your customer interaction the post purchase process plan does the same thing a purchase process plan does in the sense that it alleviates the confusion when a customer is looking at the widespread span between themselves and the integration of a complicated product their life's likely to make a purchase but when they read your plan and they think to themselves oh i can do that that's not hard and they click buy now a process plan can also combine

pre and post purchase steps for instance one test drive a car to purchase the car three enjoy free maintenance for life again the key to the success of any plan is to alleviate confusion for our customers what steps do they need to take in order to do business with you spell out those steps and it'll be as though you've paved a sidewalk through a field more people will cross the field we get frequent questions about how many steps a process plan should have the answer is it varies of course but we recommend at least three

and no more than six if doing business with you requires more than six steps break those down those steps into phases and and describe the phases in reality you might guide your customer through 20 or 30 steps but study shows when you bombard your customers with information buying decreases remember the whole point of creating a plan is to alleviate customers confusion after more than four steps may actually add to rather than reduce the confusion the key is to simplify their journey so they are more likely to do business with you the agreement plan if process

plans are about alleviating confusion agreement plans are about alleviating fears an agreement plan is understood as a list of agreements you make with your customers to help them overcome their fears of doing business with you earlier i talked about i talked about carmax and how they resolved the customer's agitation of having to deal with a used car salesman one of the tools they use to communicate that is they don't have to encounter this internal fear is an agreement plan carmack's four-point agreement includes the promise that a customer will never have to haggle afraid you'll be

stuck with a lemon carmax refuses to sell a car that doesn't meet their standards and that they put every car through a renewal process to ensure it earns their quality certification seal today carmax sells more cars than its next three competitors combined in 2015 automotive news cl named carmax the undisputed used car champion as i mentioned in chapter 5 carmax rarely advertises the solution to their customers external problems that is the need for a used car instead they focus on their customers internal problems the fear of interacting with a used car dealer and they alleviate

this fear with an agreement plan an agreement plan can also work to increase the perceived value of the services you promised to provide for instance newton greengrich's contract with america is an example of an agreement plan newt was a relatively unknown congress from georgia who led over a takeover in both houses of congress by making an agreement with voters newt simply took the age-old conversation conservative talking points turned them into a list and said if you vote for us we'll do all these things more than 300 conservative legislators signed on and new became the overnight

presidential hopeful another benefit of an agreement plan is that it can work to clarify shared values between all our customers within us the whole foods list of values has attracted millions to their stores and in ways works and as an agreement plan with their customers to source their food in a way that is socially and environmentally responsible unlike a process plan an agreement plan often works in the background agreement plans do not have to be featured on the homepage of your website although they could be but as a customer gets to know you they'll sense

a deeper level of your service and may realize why they finally encounter your uh why when they encounter your agreement plan the best way to arrive at an agreement plan is to list all of the things your customer might be concerned about as it relates to your product or service and then counter that with a list of agreements that will alleviate their fears if it's short enough we're friends with brevity obviously you can feature your agreement plan on the wall of your business or even on your packaging or on shopping bags what's the plan called

once you create your process agreement plan or both consider giving them a title that will increase the perceived value of your product or service for instance your process plan might be called an easy installation plan or the world's best night's sleep plan your agreement plan might be titled your customer satisfaction agreement or even our quality a guarantee titling your plan will frame it in the customer's mind and increase increases about the perceived value of all that your brand offers now that you've given your customers a plan they will be more likely to do business with

you you've lifted the fog and made things clear you set stones in the creek and now they are ready to continue the journey and yet before they make a commitment they will need one more thing from you they will need to call them to action i'll teach you the right and wrong ways to call customers to do business in the next chapter first though spend some time defining the plan or plans you want to implement to ease your customers fears and concerns so they will engage your brand chapter eight and calls them to action story

brand principle number five customers do not take action unless they are challenged to take action at this point in our customer story they are excited we've defined a desire identified their challenges amplify empathize with their feelings establish our competency in helping them and given them a plan but they need us to do one more thing they need us to call them to action ask them to place an order in stories characters are never taking action on their own they are always challenged to take action tom cruise's character would never have joined have journeyed to pick

up his brother in the movie rain man unless he received a call explaining his father had died romeo wouldn't have climbed into the capolet court unless he had fallen sick with love for julia elle woods wouldn't have applied for harvard unless she'd been dumbed by her boyfriend liam nelson's character wouldn't have chased the bad guys to europe unless his daughter had been kidnapped the reason why characters have to be challenged to take action is because everybody sitting in the dark theater knows human beings do not make major life decisions unless something challenges them to do

so if i wrote a story about a guy who wanted to climb everest and then one day looked at himself in the mirror and decided to do it i'd lose the audience that's not how people work bodies at rest tend to stay at rest and so do customers heroes need to be challenged by outside forces have you ever wondered why late night infomercial hosts keep screaming call now don't delay over and over and over again as though they're trying to wake people up from a zombie's trance they do that because they are trying to wake

people up from zombies trans your customers aren't bombarded with more than 3 000 commercial messages per day and unless we are bold in our act calls to actions we will be ignored if our calls and actions are soft they will not be noticed the power of the buy now button a friend who had bought and sold nearly 100 companies knows a lot about scaling a company up and as he evaluates a company he makes sure the people products and procedures are all healthy but the key ingredient he looks at for our company is whether the

company is challenging their customers to place orders my company knows the fastest way to grow in a company is to make the calls to action clear and sim and simple and then repeat them over and over he's made millions simply by buying companies creating stronger calls to action and then selling the company after their revenue increases once of the one of the company hindrances to business success is that we think of customers can read our minds it's obvious to us that when we want them to place an order why else would we be talking to

them about our products so we assume it's obvious to them isn't it there should be a buy now button in the top right corner of your website and it shouldn't be cluttered with a bunch of other buttons the same call to action should be repeated above the fold in the center of your website and again and again as people scroll down companies don't don't make their calls to action clear or reminding me of the dating days before i met my wife instead of clearly asking a girl out i'd say something like coffee is nice isn't

it do you like coffee in the world where a woman is supposed to do what what in the world is a woman supposed to do with a question like that that's not how you so that's just not how you make a baby as i got older i realized the power of clarity in fact the way my wife and i got together was probably the clearest i've communicated about anything i'd known betsy from a distance for a while but when i finally got up the courage to ask her out i discovered she had a boyfriend still

i'd been passive long enough i'd been hoping she'd notice much how much i liked her even as i completely ignored her it was time for a strong call to action the next time i saw saw her i told her how i really felt and that i'd like to call her in 30 days to ask her out i said she'd need to ditch the other guy to keep things from being awkward amazingly 30 days later she'd broken up with the other guy and we started dating about a year later we got married we're currently working on

a baby that we're probably going to name by now to remind everybody how important it is to have a clear call to action the moral of the story is people don't have esp they can't read our minds and they don't know what we want even if it seems obvious we have to clearly invite the customer to take a journey with us or they won't when i was a kid there was a guy on a late night television who used to saw mattresses in half with a chainsaw he'd scream he'd scream at the camera that crazy

and with slashing prices on all kinds of furniture i used to think people are afraid to ask for the sale because we don't want to look like this guy it's true we don't want to constantly beat our customers over the head with direct calls to action of the thousands of clients we've worked with though we've yet to encounter anybody who oversells most people think they're over selling when in truth their call to actions fall softer than a whisper do you believe in your product the reality is when we try to sell passively we communicate a

lack of belief in our product we don't ask clearly for the sale our the customer sentences census weakness they sense we're clear we're asking for charity rather than to change their lives customers aren't looking for brands that are filled with doubt and want affirmation they want they're looking for brands that have solutions to their problems if we can change a customer story for the better why shouldn't we be why shouldn't we be bold about inviting them to do business with us the guide in a movie must be direct with the hero about what they want

the hero to do otherwise the plot gets muddled and the audience starts to daydream two kinds of call to action at storybrand we recommend two kinds of calls to action direct calls of action and transitional calls to action they work like the two phases of a relationship let's say we ask a customer to buy but they don't who knows why they don't but they don't buy there's no reason to the end the relationship because just because they aren't ready to buy i believe in honoring people who aren't ready and i'm a fan of uh no

pressure sales so i still want to deepen the relationship so that when whenever they need what i sell they will remember me the way i deepen that relationship is through ten transitional calls to action so direct calls to action maybe include requests like buy now or schedule appointment or call today a direct call to action is something that leads to a sale or is at least the first step down the path that leads to a cell transitional calls to action however contain less risk and are usually offer a customer something for free transitional calls to

action usually can be the on-ramp for potential customers to an eventual purchase inviting people to watch a webinar or download a pdf are good examples of transitional calls to action to further the relationship metaphor a transitional call to action is like saying can i take you on a date and your customer and a direct call to actions like will you marry me in our marketing collateral we will always want to have direct calls to action and transitional calls to action the metaphorical conversation with our customer goes like this us will you marry me customer no

uh so will you go on a date with me customer yes will you us will you marry me now a customer no will you go out on a date with me again sure you're interesting and the information you provide us is helpful us will you marry me now okay i'll marry you now as a brand it's our job to pursue our customers we want to get to know them and for them to get to know us but we are the ones who need to take the initiative those who ask again and again shall finally receive

years ago i was preparing a keynote presentation for a global shampoo brand and my graphic designer was too busy with other projects to help not wanting to wait i decided to outsource the presentation to design a house i went online looking for a shop that dealt specifically with presentations and found two local houses that could help the first website i visited was a beautifully designed loot with a looping video loaded beneath text that explained the design house's values and priorities after about 20 seconds they were wiring their website though i decided to search for information

about how to do business with them i couldn't find anything they featured samples of previous projects a few testimonials and a phone number i could call but no direct clear call to action so i decided to check out their competitors site the other company site wasn't nearly as beautiful but it dared to be clear if you were worried about a presentation we can help you hit a grand slam the truth was i was worried and they spoke to my internal fear they also painted a picture of a climactic scene to hit a grand slam they

asked me out they offered a pdf called five things to get present presenters five things great presenters get right and i was quite curious so i downloaded the pdf and i read it in a few minutes their transitional call to action earned my trust and positioned them as a story a guide in my story they all they had also they had authority it seemed then on their website they had a schedule an appointment button because they whined and dined me i did and never went back to the initial designers website which remember which remember was

much better looking but before long i was gladly writing a check for several thousand dollars to the company that had clearly challenged me to take action direct calls to action it bears repeating that there should be at least one obvious button to press on your website and it should be the direct call to action when i say one obvious button i don't mean only one button but i one that stands out make the button a different color larger a bolder text or whatever you need to do then repeat that same button over and over so

people see it as they scroll down the page one customer should always know why we want to marry them even if they're even if they're not ready we should keep saying it you should never know when they're going to want to make a commitment and when they do you want to be the one on one knee holding flowers smiling for the picture examples of direct calls to action are order now call today schedule an appointment register today by now direct calls to action can include being included at the end of every email blast on signage

or in radio ads or even in our television commercials considering and consider including direct calls to action in every team member's email signature and if you really want to get the point across on all your business cards the idea is to make it very clear what we'd like our customers to do to make a purchase so we can help solve their problem transitional calls to action transitional calls to action direct calls to action are simple and obvious although ridiculously underused but transitional calls to action can be equally powerful to grow your business in fact story

brand grew into a multi-million dollar company and only its second year based solely on the use of transitional uh call to action recognizing that most of our clients were using the storybrand framework to fix their websites we released a free pdf called five things your website should include and thousands of people downloaded it at the back of the pdf we placed an ad for our story brand marketing workshop and in the next 12 months we doubled revenue without spending a dollar on marketing a good transitional call to action can do three powerful things stake a

claim into a territory if you want to be known as the leader in a certain territory stake a claim to that territory before a competition beats you to it creating a pdf a video series or anything else that positions you as the expert is a great way to establish authority create representative i've never i've never worried about giving away too much information in fact the more generous the brand is the more reciprocity they create all relationships are give and take and the more you give to your customers the more they will be likely to give

something to you back in the future give freely and then position yourself as the guy number three when you help your customers solve a problem even for free you position yourself as the guy the next time they encounter that problem in the area of their lives they will look to you for help transitional calls to action come in all sizes and shapes here are a few ideas to create calls to action of your own free information create a white white paper or free pdf educating your customers on your field of expertise this will position you

as the guide in your customer story and create reciprocity educational videos podcasts webinars and even live events are great transitional calls to action to be an on-ramp for a customer to make a purchase testimonials create a video or pdf including testimonials from happy clients and creates a story map in the minds of the potential customers when they see other customers experiencing a successful ending to their story they will want to that same story for themselves samples if you can give away free samples of your product to do it offering a customer ability to test drive

a car or tasting your seasoning or sample your music or read a few pages of your book are a great way to introduce credentials to your customers to your products free trial offer a free limited free unlimited time free trial works as a risk removal policy that helps you on ramp your customers once they try their product they may not be able to live without it connecting the dots earlier this year the story brand worked with a health clinic that specialized in health screening drug testing and treating minor sickness and giving shots the primary traffic

the clinic received was through businesses who needed their employees to complete drug tests still the clinic was stagnant in growth customers were coming in to get one product but weren't aware of anything else the clinic offered upon visiting the clinic one of our story brand guys noticed they needed to clear needed to create a clear direct transitional call to action patients would come into the shop sign in date and entry form and then sit in the lobby in reading magazines or watching television while they waited for a nurse as one of the story brand certified

guides consulted with the clinic she noticed the owner she she told the owner to remove the television magazines and instead of magazines she encouraged him to create transitional call to action called the health body checklist allowing patients to assess their health the checklist included questions like do you feel tired about two in the afternoon every day are you satisfied with your current weight after patients finished their drug or blood tests we suggested that nurse review the checklist with a patient and let them know about the solutions that were also available at the clinic the receptionist

could then enter the customer's data into their email marketing system and based on how a patient was tagged an automated email campaign could go into effect if the customer seemed like they needed more vitamin b they would get a series of emails explaining the benefits of a monthly vitamin b shot along with clear calls to action directing the patient to make another appointment is there a transitional call to action so you can create uh that will grow your business are you creating are are you are your direct calls to action clear and repeated often if

not your customers will likely your customers likely don't know what you want them to do remember people are drawn to clarity and away from confusion having clear calls to action means your customers aren't confused about what you want them to do and how to do business and what actions they need to take to do business with you what are the stakes once a customer decides to buy our products how can we increase the perceived value of those products and deepen the positive experience they will have with our brands how can we make the story we've

invited into them them into so enticing that they can't wait to turn the page to do this we must define the stakes what's at stake in the customer story if they do not choose to do business with us if we define if we've not defined the stakes then we've not made the story interesting in the next two modules i'll teach you how to deepen your customers experience with your brand by defining exactly what's at stake before we move forward though continue to clarify your message by brainstorming potential calls to action you can include in your

story brand script chapter nine that helps them avoid failure story brand principle number six every human being is trying to avoid a tragic ending a story lives and dies based on the question will the heroes succeed or will they fail throughout a story storytellers foreshadow a potential success ending in a potential tragic ending the audience remains in suspense as long as the storyteller keeps the hero teetering on the presid their precipice of success and failure the only two motivations a hero has in a story are to escape something bad or to experience something good and

such is life our desire to avoid pain motivates us to seek a resolution to our problems if a storyteller doesn't clearly let an audience know what no good terrible awful thing might be fall their hero unless she has overcomes their challenges the story will have no stakes and a story will and a story without stakes is boring as a as a rule each scene in a movie must answer the question what's at stake for the hero every conversation every chase every reflective montage should serve the movie in the same way it must either move the

character closer to or further from the tragic result that they would be fall from if we kept turning the pages of charlie brown's jane irie to find the dark secret of edward rochester he's been hiding we sat on the edge of our seats in the in the moving jaws because we knew the citizens of almighty island might be killed by the shark if chief martin brody didn't do something imagine a story in which nothing bad could be fall from the hero imagine a love story in which everything went well for this couple straight through to

the beautiful attention-free wedding imagine an action movie and where the bomb the hero had to destroy was actually a dud and no one was in danger would an audience care brands that don't warn their customers about what could happen if they don't buy their products fail to answer this so what question every question every customer is secretly asking where's the mayhem allstate's insurance long-running mayhem campaign features act actor dean winters humorously portraying everything from raccoons in the attic to raging fire started by a barbecue girl at the tailgang party the idea was to humorously remind

people why they need insurance mayhem has always contrasted against the peaceful stability of allstate which asks the question are you in good hands in 2015 allstate along with the advertising agency leo burnett took the campaign to a higher level during the sugar bowl on new year's day allstate launched a campaign called project share award the idea was to make people aware that people sharing their whereabouts on social media might tip off criminals about when to burglarize their homes to announce the project allstate found a couple of real people and led them to believe they won

the prize they visited the couple in their home secretly taking pictures of their household items later they recreated their home on a sound stage complete with live duplicates of their belongings the cup the couple was then invited to attend the sugar bowl and give their own private and given their own private box during the game the mayhem began auctioning off the couple's belongings on national television people were rejected to mayhemsale.com for bargain based on pricing on everything from the couples used car to an old tuba as the couple watched their possessions being sold on the

big screens at on at the game they panicked hidden cameras caught their reactions and broadcast them on live television of course the couple's actual possessions were safe nevertheless the campaign agitated a fear in many americans in fact news outlets all over the world including abc news wall street journal and the new york times covered the story suddenly threats of criminals walking into our homes as we announce our distance whereabouts on social media became a national fear the result mayhem sale received 6 000 to 10 000 hits per second immediately following each commercial the site received

more than 18 million hits during the game also mayhem sale trended in the top 10 hashtags during that game and immediately after their commercials aired surged to a number one worldwide mayhem's twitter followers increased by 24 000 during the game and the first commercial of the campaign resulted in 20 million impressions on facebook and almost 70 000 state had in in the course of one football game foreshadowed a potential failure for their customers and sold insurance protecting them both opening the story loop and offering to close it in a single campaign of course we don't

all have to access the millions it takes to create a campaign like this but the benefits of featuring the potential pitfalls of not doing business with us are much easier to include than we think blogs subjects email content and bullet points on our website can include elements of potential failure to give our customers a sense of urgency when it comes to our products and services what's there to lose as it relates to our marketing the obvious question is what will the customer lose if they don't buy our products some of you just cringed i know

i understand i used to cringe when i thought about warning my customers about intimate doom 2. why wouldn't i the last thing i wanted to be is a fear monger because it's true that fear mongers don't do well in the marketplace but fear mongering isn't not the problem 99 of businesses struggle with most of us struggle with the opposite we don't bring up the negative stakes enough on the story that we're telling falls flat remember if there are no stakes there is no story people are motivated by loss aversion emphasizing potential loss is more than

just good storytelling it's good behavioral economics in 1979 nobel memorial prize winner daniel k published a theory about why people make certain buying decisions prospect theory as it was called espoused that people are more likely to be dissatisfied with with a loss than they are to be satisfied with the gain in other words people hate losing hundred dollars more than they'll like winning a hundred dollars this of course means loss aversion is a greater motivator of buying decisions than potential gains and in fact according to can him in certain situations people are two to three

times more motivated to make a change to avoid a loss than they are to achieve a gain when minden baines worked to pass the civil rights act of 1964 he faced underlying undying pressure from the conservative political leaders across the south one of the principal leaders who refused to endorse the legislation was george wallace the then governor of alabama wallace had no vote on the bill but his influence threatened its passage at this all the same at a crucial moment in the negotiations johnson sat wallace down and explained he'd better get on the right side

of history johnson said that wallace's legacy hung in the balance that they'd either build a statue in his honor or he'd be remembered for instigating hate the choice was his johnson spelled out the narrative and emphasized the stakes including the potential of the governor's tarnish legacy the bill of rights of course passed how do we use messages from failure category in marketing in dominic infante andrew ransor and deanna womack's book building communication theory they propose a four-step process called fear appeal first we must make the reader or listener know that they are vulnerable to a

threat nearly 30 percent of all homes have evidence of termite infestation second we we should let the reader know that since they're vulnerable they should take action to reduce their vulnerability since nobody wants termites you should do something about it to protect your home third we should let them know about a specific call to action that protects them from this risk we offer a complete home treatment that will ensure your house against house it is free against termites fourth we should challenge people to take this specific action call us today and schedule your home treatment

essentially in infante rasser and womack present a soft way of agitating a fear and then highlighting a path that return readers and listeners that would return readers or listeners to peace and stability fear is the salt in the recipe we do not need to use a great deal of fear and story we're telling to our customers just a pencil pinch of salt in the frisbee will do well we do need to communicate something from failure from the failure category in order to complete our brand script too many warnings about imminent doom will turn customers off

and fancy raster and walmart explain why when receivers are either very fearful or very unafraid little attitude or behavioral change results high levels of fear are so strong that individuals block them out and low levels are too weak to produce the desired effect messaging containing moderate amounts of fear rousing content are most effective in producing a digital and or behavioral change what are you helping your customer avoid what negative consequences are you helping customers avoid could customers lose money are there health risks if they avoid your services what are their opportunity costs could they make

or save money with you that they then they have with a competitor could they qualify their life could their quality of life decline if they bypass you what's the cost of not doing business with you if you're a financial planner for example the list of what you're helping your customers avoid might look like confusion about how your money's being invested not being ready for retirement a lack of transparency from your financial advisor a lack of one-on-one interaction with your advisor or hidden fees we can even imagine a tragic scene that might be fall or our

customers if they didn't engage our financial advisor might write something like this don't postpone your retirement you've worked too hard for to for too long to not enjoy time with your grandchildren here are a few examples of what your story brand clients are helping their customers avoid perkins motor motor complex getting ripped off by a used car salesman being stuck with a lemon feeling taking advantage of riley technology audio and video for the home living in a boring home nobody will want to watch the game at your house you need a phd to turn on

the tv aerospace market market entry manufacturer of aerospace equipment product failure damaging your reputation inefficient production being passed by the competition win shape camps summer camp for kids a long boring summer a bunch of wrestlers kids in your house a regret of having wasted the summer you can see how including these ideas in each of the clients marketing material will give them an overall story a sense of completeness and urgency in this module of the story brand script you're only given a few bullet points you'll notice you're given a great depth in the more in

the success module this of course is on purpose you'll only need a few terrible dastardly awful things to warn your customers about to get the point across too much and your customers will resist you and too little and they won't know why your products even matter once we've identified the stakes your customers will be motivated to resist failure next will dramatically increase the motivation by helping them imagine what life can look like when they buy your products or services after they see what you offer and how it can make their lives better you'll have included

stakes in the narrative and customer engagement will grow first though let's warn customers about the consequences of not doing business with you [Music] chapter 10 and ends in a success story brand principle number seven never assume people understand how your brand can change their lives tell them years ago a friend gave me the best leadership advice i've ever received he said don always remember people want to be taken somewhere i've always found that advice applies to my family my team the books i write and the speeches i get and it certainly applies to our marketing

where is your brand taking people are you taking them to a financial security to the day where they'll be moved their mark into their dream home to a weekend with their friends without knowing it every potential customer we meet is asking us where we can take them ronald reagan envisioned america's as a shining city on a hill bill clinton promised us to build a bridge to the 21st century casting a clear aspirational vision it has always served as a presidential candidate by foreshadowing a potential success ending to a story or stu friedman and the wharton

school puts it defining a compelling image of an achievable future leaders captivate the imaginations of their audiences successful brands like successful leaders make it clear what life would look like if somebody engages their products or services nike promised to bring an inspiration and innovation of every athlete likewise starbucks offered inspiration and to nurture their customers one cup at a time for men men's for years men's warehouse promised you'll look the way you'll like the way you'll look and they even guaranteed it without a vision the people perish and so do brands and finally in the

most important of the story brand framework is we're going to create and offer your customers what they want a happy ending to their story the ending should be specific and clear one of the problems we run into with the storybrand clients is the vision they paint for their customers future is too fuzzy nobody gets excited about a muddled vision stories aren't vague they are defined they're about specific things happening to specific people otherwise you're they're not stories they're just lofty notions harrison ford had to defeat the terrorists on air force one and to return to

a peaceful white house erin brockovich had to win the final verdict against pacific gas and electric so the cities so the citizens of hinckley california could know justice in a good story the resolution must clearly define the audience so that the audience knows exactly what to hope for being specific matters kennedy would have been bored a division he had cast for was a highly competitive and productive space program instead he defined the ambition specifically and and as such inspired a nation we're going to put a man on the moon before and after my friend ryan

dice a digital marketer created a great tool to help us imagine and the success of our customers will experience if they use our products in a simple grid ryan allows us to see our customers lives how does they look as they engage us how they will feel what their average day will look like and what a new kind of status they will enjoy before your brand and after your brand this is a cool little what do they what do they have what are they feeling what's an average day like and what is their status filling

out this grid for your brand is a terrific exercise once you know how your customers lives will change after they engage your brand you will have plenty of copy to use in your marketing collateral the next step is to say it clearly we must tell our customers what their lives will look like after they buy our products or after they or they will have no motivation to do so we have to talk about the end vision for we have for our lives in our keynotes in our email blast on our websites and everywhere else images

are also important when it comes to create casting a vision for our customers if you're selling kitchen flooring your vision your website might show a happy mom picking up her children from the beautiful sparkling kitchen floor if you're selling education if you're selling education show us students in a classroom having a great time learning in the environment you provide whatever it is you sell show us people happily engaging with the product how to end a story for a customer ultimately the the success module of your story brand script should simply be a list of resolutions

to your customers problems brainstorm what your customer's life will look like externally if their problem is resolved and then think about how that resolution will make them feel then consider why the resolution to their problem has made the world a more just place to live in when we resolve our customers internal external and philosophical problems we've truly created a resolution that will satisfy their story if you want to take a little this concept a little deeper it's worth exploring how most stories are resolved by story experts over the centuries storytellers have learned what gives an

audience closure and a sense of satisfaction the three dominant ways storytellers end the story is by allowing the hero to win some sort of power or position be unified with somebody or something that makes them whole or experience some kind of self-realization that also makes them whole the fact are that these are the three most employed story ending implies that these are the three dominant physiological desires shared by most human beings if our brand can promise a resolution that associates with one of these powerful desires our brand script will effective and our messaging will be

enticing let's explore one of these three desires more closely number one winning power or position the need for status when i was in high school a film came out called can't buy me love in which a likable loser named ronald miller falls in love with a popular cheerleader named cindy mancini unfortunately for me ronald's character was so overlooked and invisible in his school that the most people called him donald you can imagine why the the teasing i received but we loved the movie all the same why because in because in the end of course ronald

gets the girl but he gets more than the girl he gets he gains his status after winning the heart of sydney he becomes one of the popular kids or more accurately he realizes trying to be somebody else is a waste of time which of course makes him more popular regardless everyone wants status which is evidenced by the number of coming of age stories in which a character realizes they've got what it takes to run with the big dogs as i mentioned earlier the primary function of our brain is to help us survive and thrive as

part of the survival means gaining status our brand can participate in making our customers more esteemed respected and appealing in a society in a social context or offering something something they want so how can our brand offer status there are more there are many ways offering access my wife loves using her starbucks membership card because it gains her points which gains her status and the occasional free latte we've had many conversations about the intangibility of said status but i've learned that not to argue but i've learned not to argue about it she's excited to be

on her way to some kind of double pump jazzy diamond level which i'm sure means she can cut in front of few people at the drive-through create scarcity offering a limited number of a specific item creates scarcity and owning something that is scarce often seen as a status symbol when jeeps when jeep puts a badge uh that reads limited on the back of their drain carrier key they're promoting the scarcity of the luxury suv offer a premium most companies earn 70 or more of their revenue from a small percentage of their clients few though identify

those clients and offer them a title such as preferred or diamond member i love i love being an emerald club member with national car rental because it means i get to bypass the counter jump in a car and drive off even we even recommend a status associated title for the non-profit brands we work with people will be much more likely to know if they are an anchor donor even if they are more likely to get special privileges like updates from the founder or access to other anchor uh donors and at fundraisers offer identity association premium

brands like mercedes and rolex sell status as much as they do luxury is it is it worth it depends on who you ask status really does open doors and by associating with their brand and thus their customers with success and refinement they offer them status number two union that makes the whole hero whole the need for something external to create completeness the reason stories often end with a union of lovers has so little to do with the desire for love or sex rather the union for male and female characteristics fulfills the reader in a desire

for wholeness when the prince rescues the princess and they unite in a wedding at the end of the movie the audience subconsciously experiences the joining of two halves the subconscious idea is that the man needs to be more like a woman and the woman needs to be more like a man in order to be whole this need this need to be completed by an external source doesn't have to include a wedding or even a male or female character however a superhero deficient in a particular way we could could have be helped out by another superhero

who ranters the story for example the controlling idea of this ending is that the character is rescued by somebody or something else that they needed in order to for them to be made complete in love stories of course it's the idea of union of male and female characteristics but the emotional need for this kind of story resolves is much greater it's about being made whole by external provision so what are some of the ways that we can offer external help for our customers looking to be complete or whole here are a few examples reduce anxiety

for years brands that sell basic items like dish detergent glass cleaner have almost comically positioned their products as anti-anxiety medication as the hero in the commercial uses the product his rehearsal and so frustration subdues until at last they're able to see the bright shining face going back at them in the polished platter and off to they go into the sunset what is the really brand offering satisfaction for a job well done a feeling of closure about a clean house a better more peaceful life will the use of your product lead to relief of stress and

a feeling of completeness if so talk about it and show in your marketing material customers who don't have the right tools must work harder because they are well and complete but what if a tool you offer could give them what they're missing whether they're selling wheelbarrows software jackhammers or fishing apparatus manufacturers have been positioned positioning tools as the thing that will make you super human for decades for many uh for more for more time many customers time is the enemy and if our product can expand time we're offering to solve an external problem that is

cause causing an internal frustration not being able to fit it all in it is often perceived by our customers as a personal deficiency any tool system or philosophy or even person who can expand time may offer a sense of completeness number three the ultimate self-realization or acceptance the need to reach our potential movies like rudy hoosiers and chariots on a fire all tap into the human desire to reach our potential it's not just sports movies legally blonde the theory of everything and whiplash are all about heroes who face great odds and their journey to prove

themselves once proven the heroes realize an inner peace and can finally accept themselves because they've reached their potential an outward demonstration of worth isn't always necessary to create this kind of resolution heroes can take an internal journey to come to the same conclusion when bridget jones realized she was too good for the boss for with whom she desired a relationship she came to an ultimate self-realization that returned to return to a place of peace and stability and while it's true she didn't close she didn't close the story loop of uniting with the man she wanted

a resolution is brought about as she abandons that goal in exchange for a greater fulfillment of self acceptance and contentment in 2013 the soap company dove released a series of short films featuring women's who were subjects of an fbi trained forensic art artist without actually seeing the women the artists would draw each woman based on how she described herself later the artist would draw the same woman based on how a stranger described her the reveal was shocking the sketches drawn from the stranger's description were always more beautiful than the ones in which the womans described

themselves the point many women don't realize how beautiful they are the ad was an attempt to help women accept themselves and find greater contentment with their intrinsic beauty whether it's by fulfilling some purpose or accepting themselves as they are this return to contentment resolves something in a story that is usually human the desire for self-acceptance how can a brand offer a sense of ultimate self-realization or self-acceptance here are a few ideas inspiration if an aspect of your brand can offer or be associated with an inspirational fee open the floodgates brands like red bull harvard business

review under armour the ken blanchard company mike michelob ultra or even gmc have associated themselves with athletic and intellectual accomplishment and thus a sense of self actualization acceptance helping people accept themselves as they are just is a thoughtful thing to do it's good marketing not unlike the dev campaign american eagle turned heads when they launched their airy campaign in the campaign american eagle used real people as models and refused to retouch the images tackling body image issues american eagle went beyond basic product promotion and contributed to universal self acceptance among their clientele and transcendence brands

that invite customers to participate in a larger movement offer a greater and more pac impactful along with their products and services tom shoes built a name for itself by selling his style of shoes while simultaneously giving a pair to someone in need in what they would call one for one model those who wore the shoes claimed a major factor in deciding for them to purchase the shoe was a sense of involvement with the larger movement at less than 10 years old the for-profit brand sold more than 700 million dollars and another example of a brand

that helps customers achieve a level of transcendence is stamen johnson's clothing brand fubu an acronym for us by us in a reference to the african-american community being unrepresented being represented in the marketplace the brand offers more than fashion offers a sense of unity transcendence and an entrepreneurialism for the african-american community closing the story loops the idea behind the success module in the sp7 framework is that we offer to close a story loop human beings are looking for resolutions through their external internal and philosophical problems and they can achieve this through among other things status self-realization

self-acceptance and transcendence if our products can help people achieve these things we should help we should make this a core aspect of our brand promise keep it simple offering to close a story loop is much more simple than you think even the inclusion of a smiley happy people on your website is a strong way to offer the closing of a story loop people want to be happy and those images promised your product will deliver if you sell rugs a successful resolution might be a beautiful room on a or a floor that finally feels finished if

you sell ice cream a successful resolution might be a rich creamy taste of heaven camping gear and adventure to remember well i've been slightly political in this chapter or slightly philosophical in this chapter try not to overthink it what problem are you trying to resolve in your customer's life and what does the resolution look like stick to the basic answers because they really do work then when you get really good start diving into deeper levels of the problem your brand resolves the important idea in this section is that we need to show repeatedly how our

product or service can make somebody's life better if we don't tell the people where we're taking them they won't follow a story has to go somewhere have you told your customers where you want to take them [Music] chapter 11 people want your brand to participate in their transformation even though you've filled out all seven parts of your story brand brand script you've likely noticed that there's one left the final section serves as the foundation for the overall brand script and will help you create a guide focusing your brand in fact we've only danced around the

greatest single motivation your customer has this single motivator is the driving force behind nearly every single decision we make as human beings whether we're buying law on furniture or choosing a mate we can't escape it i'm talking about the human desire to transform everybody wants to change everybody wants to be somebody different somebody better or perhaps somebody who simply becomes more self accepting when you look closely at your brand script you'll see it your brand is helping people become better versions of themselves which is a beautiful thing you are helping them become wiser more equipped

or more physically fit more accepted or more at peace like it or not and we hope you like it we are all participating in our customers transformation which is exactly what they want us to do brands that participate in the identity transformation of their customers create passionate brand evangelists heroes are designed to transform at the beginning of the story the hero is usually flawed filled with doubt and ill-equipped for the task set before them the guide aides them on their journey rife with conflict the conflict begins to change the character though forced into action the

hero develops skills and act crews the experience needed to defeat their foe though the hero is still filled with doubt they summon the courage to engage and the in the climatic scene defeat villain proving once and for all they have changed that they are now competent to face challenges and are better versions of themselves the story has transformed them this is the same arc by the way this is the arc for the old man and in the sea and pride and prejudice pinocchio hamlet and sleeping beauty and the tomboy it's the arc of almost every

popular story we can name why because it's our story feelings of self-doubt are universal it is the desire to become somebody competent and courageous and all of this matters when it becomes to our brand when it comes to our branding our products and services a few important questions we have to ask ourselves when we're representing our brand are who does our customer want to become what kind of person do they want to be and what is their aspirational identity smart brands define an aspirational identity recently i ran to home down to home depot to get

a stud finder so i could install shelfing in the garage next to the stud finders in the tool section was a selection of gerber knives a gerber knife a gerber knife company out of portland oregon that makes a range of multi-purpose pocket knives they're com their commercial campaign however offers the buyer a lot more than a knife they sell something intangible they sell an identity and by that mean i mean they sell the kind of person you and i can become i've been studying their commercials for a long time and even though i know exactly

what they were doing to my subconscious i always i wanted one anyway but why i thought to myself as i stood there staring at the knives i'm a writer the only thing i need a knife for is to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich still the pull was palpable what if i had to swim under a boat to cut a tangled rope from its propeller or i needed to cut a pant leg off from my bloody blue jeans to make a tourniquet for my injured arm thankfully my executive brain overpowered my printed brain and

i walked away with just the stud finder but why was it so hard why did i want that knife so badly and then why did i specifically want a gerber knife certainly they make great knives but there are many other knife company great making knife companies that i've never really cared or noticed the reason was simple gerber defined an aspirational identity for their customers and they associated their product with that identity the aspirational identity of a gerber knife customer customer is that they are tough adventurous fearless action oriented and competent to do a hard job

epitomized in their advertising campaign hello trouble gerber positioned their customer as the kind of person who sells boats into storms ride bulls rescues people from floods and yes cuts tangled ropes from boat propellers in their television commercials they present images of these aspirational heroic figures over anthemic music and narrator reciting lines hello trouble it's been a while since we last met but i know you're still out there and i know a feeling you're looking for me you wish i'd forget you don't you trouble perhaps it's that you is you ha perhaps it's you that has

forgotten me perhaps i need to come find you to remind you who i am the commercial was terrific one day to my surprise the story brandon alumni who happened to be one of the army rangers about whom the black hawk down was made stopped by my house we caught up for a moment and then he gave me a little surprise thank you a gerber knife he even had my name engraved on the blade he knew i liked the commercial and thought it'd be a thoughtful gift and to this day i keep that knife clipped into

the dashboard of my truck occasionally i'll take it into the kitchen stare stare at a peanut butter jar and say hello trouble i may just be a writer but i love that knife but let me ask you a question what was that was that knife a waste of money i mean let's say let's say i did pay 50 for the knife and never used it did i get ripped off i asked that question to hundreds of people who had never attended the story brandon marketing workshop and the answer has always come back to the same

no it was not a waste of money it was well worth the forty dollars i can't help but argue the truth is i got a knife and i got something more than a knife in a way gerber helped me become a better person they defined an aspirational identity and invited me to step into it they made me feel more tough and adventurous and they even created a moment between two friends and that's what a great that's worth a great deal more than fifty dollars how does your how does your customers want to be described by

others the best way to identify an aspirational identity that our customers may be attracted to is to consider how they want their friends to talk about them think about it when others talk about you what do you want them to say how do we how how we answer that question reveals who is it we'd like to be it's the same for our customers as it relates to your brand how does your customer want to be perceived by their friends and how can you help them become that kind of person can you participate in their identity

transformation if you offer execute executive coaching your clients may want to be seen as competent generous and disciplined if you sell sports equipment your customers likely want to be perceived as an active fit and successful in their athletic pursuits once we know who our customers want to be we will have language to use in emails blog posts and in all manners of marketing material a guide offers more than a product and a plan playing the guide is more important than a marketing strategy it's a position of the heart when a brand commits itself to their

customers journey to helping them resolve their external internal and philosophical problems and then inspires them to with an aspirational identity they do more than sell products they change lives and leaders who care more about changing lives than they do about selling products tend to do a good bit of both last year storybrand consulted with dave ramsey and his team at ramsey solution ramsay solutions may be the best example of a narrative based company i know and dave himself is a terrific example of a guide over a series of workshops dinners and speeches we introduced the

ramsey team to the sp7 framework less less as a way of educating them and more as a way of giving them vocabulary to to what they were already doing ramsay hosts one of the largest radio shows in america with more than 8 million daily listeners on that show he offers financial advice and strategies that are centered around tackling and conquering personal debt unlike many advisors though ramsey offers more than wisdom he offers a narrative map his customers can step into ramsey comes back after every break on his show uh with the same line welcome back

to the dave ramsey show where debt is dumb cash is king and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the bmw as the status symbol of choice there they are the elements of the story complete with identity to step into and a new status symbol to go along with it though dave's face is prominent on book covers and billboards promoting his show he never positions himself as the hero instead ramsey has a near obsession with his listeners journeys dave's understanding of his listeners external problems consumer debt and financial illiteracy and internal problems

confusing and feeling this of hope hopelessness as well as their philosophical problem accruing debt for things we don't need but posits moral questions engages listeners in a living story always entertaining dave never misses an opportunity to embolden his listeners with an aspirational identity encouraging improvements and reminding them that tackling their financial challenges is a step to personal strength and there are a few of life's problems that can't be conquered with a little strategy and commitment dave even offers a climactic scene in his customers story after executing the planning offers through the financial peace university listeners

are invited on his show to perform a debt-free screen people people travel from thousands of miles away to be featured on the show and when they arrive dozens of ramsay teams surround them and accomplish them with applause and heroes shout i'm debt free once a listener has completed the journey dave lets them know they've changed and that they're now different and they can't accomplish things if they and there's nothing they can accomplish if they apply themselves great brands obsess about the transformation of their customers when we first met with dave i was surprised to learn

he didn't know that affirming of a hero's transformation was an oft included scene in end of many stories after the climactic scene the debt free scream the guide comes back to affirm the transition of the hero in the star wars the ghost of obi-wan stands next to luke skywalker as he's rewarded for bravery in the king's speech lionel tells king george he will be a great king peter sits billy being down in the movie moneyball and lets him know he's hit the equivalent of a home run as the manager of the ace the main purpose

of the scene is to serve as the mark of the transitional form transformation the heroes experience so the audience has a point of reference that contrasts the hero's character from the story's beginning the audience needs to be told a very clear no the audience needs to be told very clearly how far the hero has come especially since the hero usually struggles with crippling doubt right up until the end and they don't even realize how much they have changed a hero needs to be somebody else to step into the story and a hero needs to be

somebody else into the story to tell them they're different they're better that somebody is the guide that somebody is you there are hundreds of thousands of financial advisors and thousands of them have written books hundreds of those who've written books have podcasts or radio shows and yet dave ramsey enjoys a wire wider popularity why well certainly his advice is good nobody is attracted to his incompetence but i'm convinced it's the way he frames the customer's journey as a narrative and participates in their transformation that sets him apart identity transformation in the foundational module of your

story brand brand script we've included a section that will allow you to define an identity transformation your customers may experience as they re relate to your brand who does your customer want to be become as they relate to your products and services at storybrand we want our customers to become marketing experts when they leave our workshop or after having spent time with our storybrand guides we want them to return to the office and have people wonder what happened to them how did they get such mark grey how did they get such how did they get

such marketing savvy how did they become so clear in their thinking why are their ideas suddenly so good did they suddenly get a phd in messaging similar to the success module of your brand script the aspirational identity section answers a question about how the story ends except instead of telling us where the story is going tell us who the hero has become brands realize that their customers are human filled with emotion driven to transform and in need of help truly to do more than just sell products they change people dave ramsey changes people starbucks changes

people apple changes people tom's shoes changes people kerberos knife changes people it's not it's no wonder brands like these have such passionate fans and do so well in the marketplace a couple examples of a transformational identity thousands of story brand clients have defined aspirational identity for their customers and begun to participate in the transformation because of this more and more companies are now not just improving the world through their products and services they're actually improving the way their customers see themselves offering offering an aspirational identity to our clients adds enormous value to everything we offer

here are some examples of aspirational identities from the story brand alumni pet foodbrand from a passive pet dog owner to every dog's hero financial advisor from confused and ill-equipped to competent and smart and a shampoo brand from anxious and gloom to carefree and radiant have you thought about who your customers want to become participating your customers transformation can give new life and meaning to your business when your team realizes that they sell more than products that they guide people toward a stronger belief in themselves then their their work will have a greater meaning spend some

time thinking about who you want your customers to become you can improve the way they see themselves how can your brand participate in your customers transformational journey let's do more than help our heroes win let's help them digitally transform section three implement your story brand script chapter 12 building a better website we will only see increased engagement from our customers if we implement our story brand brand script and our marketing and our messaging material the brand script we've put together has shown up on websites and in email campaigns elevator pitches and in sales scripts you

must edit existing marketing materials and create new and better marketing materials and then get those materials in the hands of potential customers to the degree that you implement your story brand brand script is to the degree that which people will understand why they need your products and services the more we implement the more your customers will listen the more you execute the more clearly you'll communicate and the more your brand will stand out in the third section of building a story brand gives companies large and small tangible practical steps they can take to apply their

story brand brand script whether you're a mom and pop stop shop or a startup a personal brand or even a multi-billion dollar organization you'll learn from thousands of companies who have created and executed their story brand brand scripts to see radical results start with your website most of us don't have millions to spend on marketing campaigns but that's okay these days we can't we can get we can get serious traction just by paying attention to our digital presence a great digital presence starts with a clear and effective website our website isn't the only tool we

need to motivate buyers but it's usually the one that does the heavy lifting people may hear about us through word of mouth or social media but they're definitely going to go on our website to learn more when they get to our website their hopes need to be confirmed and they need to be convinced we have a solution to their problem in short we need a website that passes the grunt test and converts briar browsers into buyers keep it simple at our workshop we've reviewed thousands of websites and most of them have succumbed into villainous noise

the days of using a website as a clearinghouse of information are over businesses were once able to post all of the small print about what they do in their website but the internet has changed that today your website should be the equivalent of an elevator pitch your website is likely to be the first impression a potential customer will receive about your company and it's almost like a first date the customer simply needs to know that you have something they want and can be trusted to deliver whatever that is even if your company has grown because

of word of mouth a website is full of noise can kill potential sales your website matters as we've helped our clients and create great websites we've come back to five things they need to include in in order to see results these five things are just the beginning of a marketing campaign but unless we've got these five things working for us there's no need to move on let's just call these the basics the five things your website should include one an offer above the fold what i mean when you go to your website the first thing

they see is the text above the fold above the folder comes to a newspaper industry and it turns to the stories that are printed above the news where the newspaper folds in half on a website the images and texts above the fold are the things you see before you start scrolling down as i mentioned i like to think of this message as above the fold as a first day and then when you scroll down you can put in the messages you want to share on a second or third day but as we've talked about the

stuff you share on a first date should be short enticing and exclusively customer centric my wife was recently gifted an online membership to some sort of cooking school in seattle a friend sent to her as a as a thank you for some work she had done on their website at first betsy was excited until she went to the site on the main page of the website before she logged in there was a beautiful picture of a carrot cake and beneath it it was some kind of inside joke about having something to eat while watching game

of thrones we didn't get it she scrolled down and clicked on a video hoping it would hoping he would explain what the kind of thing should be given instead it was the video feat featured a cartoon explanation of how the company got started somebody named joe met somebody named karen who was friends with somebody named todd and they all love cooking it wasn't until my wife signing in and began exploring what the site offered that she got excited she came to bed that night telling me about a certain kind of natural ingredient she could use

that would take color out of liquor so all of her cocktails would be look clear and i didn't understand why this was so important until she explained that the sage from her garden would stand out more as it hung from the glass oh the sage i said they offered a service to help your sage stand out no it took me a couple of hours to figure it out but then the whole but in the whole subscription is about a three is about three fun friends in a seattle who are going to make me a pro

in the kitchen bingo betsy said it she said the very words that needed to be printed above the fold on their website we will make you a pro in the kitchen one sentence one short sentence would have helped us understand what they offered and even given us words to use to help their business spread there is no telling how many customers site there's no telling how many customers that site is losing because they are making customers work so hard to understand why anybody would care about their service my own wife who now loves the site

would have bounced had she not been given a free pass the idea here is that customers need to know what's in it for them right when they read the text the text should be bold and the statement should be short it should be it should be easy to read and not be buried under buttons or clutter i recently went to the website for squarespace and it said we help you make beautiful websites perfect they could have said a lot of things on their website but because they know to keep their message short and relevant they're

making millions above the fold make sure the images in text you use are one of the following criteria they promise an aspirational identity by offering to make my wife a pro in the kitchen and the school in seattle could have let her know what's in it for her and by appealing to an aspirational identity we can we help our customers become competent in something that will they be different after they've engaged with us let's spell it out they promise to solve a problem if you can fix a problem tell us can you stop my cat

from clawing the furniture my car is my car from overheating my hair from thinning say it we didn't go to your website to read about how many company softball games you've won we came here to solve a problem they state exactly what they do the easiest thing we can do on our website is state exactly what we do there's a shop down the street from us called local honey which which would cause anybody to think about they sell honey they quickly overcame this confusion though with a tagline that says we sell clothes and we do

hair gotcha local honey sells clothes and does hair now i filed them away in the rolodex of my brain and i will remember that when i need a new hair or new clothes take a look at your website and make sure it's obvious what you can offer your customer some of our clients do spell out what their customers offer but they spell it out in the middle of a paragraph that states out we've been in business since 1979 that's nice and sweet but jk rowling didn't start our first harry potter harry potter novel with my

name is jk rowling and for a long time i've wanted to write a book the fact that she's always wanted to write a book wasn't part of the actual harry potter story and she was smart enough to know it she got right to the point she hooked the reader in and was smart and we can be smart too an offer above the fold is a sure way to get it customer hooked on the story we're telling obvious calls to action if you're not sure what a call to action is go back and read chapter 8

in this book it's important for now know that the whole point of your website is to create a place where the direct call to action button makes sense and is enticing while we're in business to serve our customers and better the world will be out of business soon if people don't click that buy now button let's not hide it there are two main places where we want the call to action the first is at the top right of our website and the second is as the i moves in a z pattern across the website is

in the bottom right or is in the middle of the page and offer followed another by the by now button then you've likely gone through all the noise in your company customer's mind and now they're now they know what story your role can play for the best results of the buy now buttons should be different color than any other button on the site preferably brighter so it stands out and both buttons should look exactly the same i know this sounds a little overkill but remember people don't need to read websites they scan them you want

a button to keep showing that up like a recurring thing a person has to hear something or read something many times before they process the information so we want to repeat our main call to action several times your transitional call to action could also be obvious but let's not distract it from from what the direct call to action is i like featuring the transitional call to action in a less right button to the right uh to the call to action so the will do you marry money button can and can we go out next button

requests are right next to each other remember if you aren't asking people to place an order they won't images of success words make up the majority of our messaging but not all of it the images we use on our website also communicate something if people come if people come to our website and see pictures of our building we're likely wasting some of their mental bandwidth on meaningless messages unless of course you're a bed and breakfast but even then images of a building aren't what i'd lead with i'd save that for a second date we believe

images of smiling happy people who have had a presentable experience closed an open loop story by engaging your brand should be featured on your website everybody wants to experience a better life in some way or another and while it may seem simple images of people smiling or looking satisfied speak to us they represent an emotional destination we'd like to head toward many of us need to display our products but if we can feature those products in the hands of smiling people our images might have more power not everyone needs to be smiling of course this

won't seem authentic but in general we need to communicate a sense of health well-being and satisfaction with our brand the easiest way to do this is by displaying happy customers a bite size breakdown of your revenue streams number four a common challenge for many businesses is that they need to communicate simply about what they do but they've but they've diversified their revenue stream so widely that they're having trouble knowing where to start if this is your struggle you're hardly alone we had a client a couple years ago that two main products a two-day personalized life

planning process for individuals and a two-day strategic operations planning sessions for teams of executive leaders it sounds simple enough except the company didn't really make any money off either product instead they made money training and certifying the facilitators the challenge then was to increase demand for the product so that more and more people would want to become facilitators this means that they had to drive traffic to three different products the life planning product the strats up product and the facilitator certification if this company sounds like yours the first challenge is to find an overall umbrella

message that unifies the various streams for our friends delivering life planning and strat ops facilitations we chose the need to help people for a customized plan above above the fold on the website we recommended the text the key to success is a customized plan over an image of a facilitator mapping out a plan on a whiteboard for a satisfied client as a potential customer scroll down the page they would see two sections to choose from a personalized life plan and a corporate strategy plan each of these buttons led to new pages with messages filtered by

two different brand scripts customers were able to schedule facilitations on either page the key to growing the business was through a button at the top bottom of each facilitator page that said become a trained facilitator we may think that our business is too diverse to communicate clearly but it probably isn't certainly there are examples of various brands within an umbrella company that need to be split up and marketed separately but in most cases we can find an umbrella theme to unite them all once we have an umbrella message we can separate the divisions using different

web pages and different brand scripts the key is clarity when we break down our divisions clearly so people can understand what we offer customers will be able to choose their own adventure without getting lost number five very few words people don't read websites anymore they scan them if there's a paragraph above the full on your website it's being passed over i promise around the office we used to say write it in the morse code when we needed our marketing copy by morris code we mean copy that is brief punchy and relative to our customers think

about it in a caveman setting you sell cupcakes cupcakes good me won't cupcake we like being cupcake you must go to the bakery now most of us are faded to the opposite direction we use too much text as parents ourselves we understand what it feels like to be to want the best for our children that's why we've created a school where parents work closely with children through every step of the children's educational journey when you could have just said we conference calls with your children child's teacher as a bulleted point along with five other great

differentiators about your school as customers scroll down your page it's okay to use more and more words but by more and more i me really mean a few sentences here and there some of the most effective websites i've reviewed has used 10 sentences or less on the entire page and that's the equivalent about 10 tweets or one press conference with bill belichick if you don't want to use a long section if you do want to use a long section of text to explain something just just place a little read more link at the end of

the first or second sentence so people can expand it if they like that way you aren't bombarding customers with too much text as an experiment let's see if you can cut the half of the words out on your website can you replace some of the text with images can you reduce the whole paragraphs into three or four bulleted points can you summarize sentences into bite-sized sound bites if so make those changes soon the result is the fewer words you use the more likely is that people will read them stay on script there are five things

most important to do with your website and there are more of course but if you added all the rest of the things in strips and stats tips and strategies together they wouldn't make as big of a difference as getting these five strategies right if you think about your story brand script as a drum kit think of your website as a drum solo there shouldn't be a single word image or idea shared on your website that doesn't come from the thoughts or generated by your story brand brand script these words don't have to be an exact

replica of your brand script but the ideas should be the same if you're including your messages on your website that don't come from one of the categories of your story brand seven part framework your customers will only hear noise [Music] chapter 13 using storybrand to form to transform company culture so far we've seen how a solid story brand brand script transform customer engagement but its value doesn't stop there your brand script can be leveraged to transform employee engagement and has an enormous implications for your company culture customers aren't the only ones who get confused when

your message is unclear employees also get confused from the division president to the regional manager to the labor earning minimum wage on the front line the curse of the narrative void you may not realize this but your organization is haunted i know this because every organization encounters the same sinister spirit that roams the halls looking for victims to oppress i call this nifty shadow the narrative void the narrative void is a vacant space that occurs inside of the organization where there's no story to keep everyone aligned in any extreme cases the narrative void can take

up residency in the very center of the organization splintering it into factions of disconnected efforts that never quite come together as a unified mission for years companies have attempted to exercise the narrative void by using the most sacred document available the mission statement the court the corporate mission statement is like a holy grail of organizational effectiveness with monostatic with monastic dedication executives gather for off-site retreats where they edge painstakingly phrases onto tablets few will ever read and even fewer will understand or apply talk about a story going nowhere needless to say only in very rare

cases has a mission statement actually led a company to be on a mission are your people confused the diagram below gives a snapshot of an organization infected with a narrative void it paints a picture of many organizations today the difference in divisions across the organization exists in microcosms that can only be truly understood by the people who live in them left to themselves these people must make decisions and develop strategies to meet demands they assume that these decisions only affect them but along the way their choices create tiny over overtones that ripple across the organization

from an or organizational perspective it's like bleeding to death from a thousand paper cuts as you can see where there's no plot there's no productivity the cost of a narrative void in the 1990s gallup began measuring the level of commitment employees felt towards their job and their employer the number of the numbers were startingly startingly low their research found out that one out of five employees nationwide were truly excited about the work they were doing this was a problem the obvious assumption is that an engaged associates gives more discretionary effort than someone who is not

engaged oh hold on hello an engaged employee gives more discretionary effort than an employee who is not engaged now we're gonna switch cameras hello hold on one second guys hello back hello sorry how long i'm just gonna keep going here all right not only that but engage and associates took fewer sick days and were less likely to become a turnover statistic gallup's discovery revealed that companies were losing hundreds of millions of dollars through gaps in productivity and efficiency and back in 2012 gallup gallup estimated that this was costing the united states between 450 billion and

550 billion each year to say employers pay someone that the same amount in salaries and benefits whether they're engaged or not [Music] whether they're engaged or not so when leaders of companies began to get their heads around gallup's findings the race was on to cure the disengagement epidemic as it turns out one of the biggest contributors to the rise of disengagement has been the information explosion as i mentioned earlier people are bombarded with more and more than 3 000 marketing messages every 24 hours and that's just marketing messages the number of non-marketing messages through articles

internet posts and slanted news stories is even higher compared to sig 1971 we've gone through three television networks and one local newspaper to more than 200 channels millions of news blogs podcasts internet you know twitter instagram snapchat facebook linkedin and meanwhile the communication of most companies has been going in reverse the personal interaction that once fueled connection in the workplace has been replaced by telecommuting remote offices um and conference calls the days of catching up while around the water cooler are gone granted they've had email blasts and an employee portal but studies have shown readership

of those outlets is minimal could it be that the white noise is a breeding ground for the narrative void i don't think it's a coincidence a strong story brand in inspired narrative expels the narrative expels the narrative void the way the light drives out the darkness companies who calibrate companies who calibrate their activities around a common story don't just state their mission they're on a mission they didn't dream about a better story their culture tells one just because you know the story doesn't mean your team does so how does the story brand stories brand script

stop the bleeding let's look at how the most workplace how most workplaces work in many cases it starts on with onboarding without a story brand brand script it usually goes like this hr person welcomes a new employee issues a company key fob and sits them down in front of their sexual harassment video for 10 minutes next they skim through the company manual together some light and next they skim through the company manual together and cover some light gossip about the personal life of a certain senior manager a quick trip to the lobby and read the

company mission statement drop off the new guy at his cube and the hr person is back in his desk in an hour done for the next three to five years the new guy does a solid job meeting all the performance management metrics laid out by the supervisor he earns three bonuses one promotion in the department's top award for the two years in a row and never works past 6 p.m he learns to navigate around the people who create resistance pick his battles accepts compromises and it absorbs occasional consequences then one afternoon a head owner calls

him with a good enough offer and he's on to the next chapter of his life no boats were rocked no stars were reached for the company this there were wins and losses and a few ties it's like a movie where nothing happens nobody cares and the popcorn is stale is it any wonder the workplace is wrecked by disengagement did you notice the narrative void in the story without a unifying narrative in the center there was nothing to inspire the new hire beyond the status quo the company didn't do anything wrong but they didn't do anything

special either in a competitive environment that wouldn't get you very far that's the intoxicating deception of the narrative void it lulls the company to sleep and then eventually to death getting the organization back on mission when customers are invited into a magnificent magnificent story it creates customer engagement could the same be true for employees absolutely with a story brand inspired narrative ordinary jobs become extraordinary adventures with a unifying brand script the above story would have gone more like this before even applying to the job the prospective employee has already heard about the buzz on the

street about this cool company how it's it's somehow more alive the people who work there love it and so do their customers they exude a sense of competence within their industry as well as across the community in general their leaders are respected even their former employees talk about it with a hint of sentimental longing one of the lists on the list of ideal places to work there there are a few that compare during the interview the candidate starts to understand where the buzz has been coming from the hiring manager describes the company the way you

might describe lewis and clark preparing to tame the western frontier there are inter interesting characters whose lives have led them to this place business goals surround like plot twists and there are mountains to climb in rivers across and there are storms to weather bears to hunt and treasures to find the hiring manager is visibly excited as she walks effortlessly through seven categories of the company's narrative but not just anyone gets selected for this expedition the employee of these companies aren't trying to be snobs they're just trying staying true to the story they're they're following and

if they don't want to be in the compromise of the plot if you happen to be selected it's because you because destiny basically demands it in instantly the candidates the concept of work shifts up a level it's no longer about what he can get out of work it's also about who he will become if he's allowed to enter the story he senses that working for this company will transform him by the second and third interviews the candidate has met most of the team and been even been interviewed by them everyone meets everyone he meets tells

the exact same story he heard on the on the street and in the first interview the story is growing on him he realizes he needs to be part of the story likely to be on to be fully satisfied in his life we all do finally his first day on the job arrives and the onboarding experience is much more like being adopted than being hired he spends quality time with the facilitator who takes on a small new team through a curriculum explaining the story of their customer and how the company positions themselves as the guide in

their customer story amazingly the onboarding is more about the company's customers than it is about the company itself the organization loves their customers and is obsessed with seeing them win daily finally the new employee discovers the secret the people are here to serve a customer they love our new recruit is then invited into a special luncheon for new hires hosted by the ceo during the luncheon the ceo delivers a short but powerful keynote based on the company's brand script the keynote is invigorating the ceo is intoxicating in his love for the company's customers and the

whole thing backs up what the new report learned during the onboarding course the grand finale a short film based on the company's story brand script about the amazing impact the organization is not only making in business but also in the lives of individuals our new recruit asks hr director if he can get a link to the video he so he can send it to his friends and family for more or less bragging about his new job for the next three or five years every new guy feels like he's still getting to know the place every

month he discovers new reasons why this is his dream job pictures of customers are plastered all over the wall celebrating their success his daily tasks are not mundane but specific objectives that have him working together with other teams to help their customers solve their problems that they are frustrating them his co-workers are not his competition but a supportive community that actually wants him to thrive and grow as they live out a story about changing the world customers visit the office get a tour of the company that helped them solve their problems headhunters get call called

every month with jobs that almost always represent a raise and promotion he usually forgets to call them back across the organization the people seem fully present not just physically but mentally the productivity is high and efficiency is a matter of pride thanks to a low very low turnover the company maintains a rich repository of valuable experience that pays dividends most companies never realize did you know that the uh notice the alignment and the consistency in this story it's not because they gathered around in a plaque in the lobby each morning and seeing the company song

like a bunch of communists obeying a dictator's failed vision if you don't know their secret it's because they're just sort of fell into place spontaneously but it's because it's a leadership team understands the power of story and has created a story brand brand script and has learned to implement that narrative in every facet of the organization when a mission comes to life mission statements were never a bad idea they just were never enough in fact mission is exactly what people need in order to come together as a company but a statement is inadequate to turn

a company into companies mission into a story it's like reading a tagline on a movie poster instead of seeing the actual movie ben ortz or lip is the director of story brand culture program he specializes in implementing the story brand framework inside large organizations a few years ago a very fat a very popular fast food restaurant chain um a few years ago a very popular fast food restaurant chain approached his team about helping them with engagement at the time the brand has crossed a billion dollar threshold and was experiencing about five percent growth that might

seem pretty solid to most people but this but this place has has amazing food and has been um has made up some of the finest people you'll meet ben felt like they should be doing better after some spending some time at the headquarters and behind the scenes in the customers and at several states it was clear that something completely had begun some complacency had began to set in there was nothing wrong with their operations the product was phenomenal and their marketing was effective the problem was they'd grown large enough and in so many directions that

they lost their plot it's not unlike when a movie becomes a success that they turn into a sequel often the story just feels forced if yours is your thought most fear on script killing a narrative void isn't easy and it takes time around the storybrand office that ben uses the term thought most fear a thoughtmost fear is an individual mixture of beliefs and ideas that drives employee behavior and performance [Music] it improves when a storybrand's narrative script is created talking points are devised and a plan of action is executed and put into place to reinforce

those talking points so every stakeholder understands their important role for the restaurant chain in question this involves video curriculum a series of regional meetings and a major national convention and updates from the ceo often filmed in casual settings from the headquarters retreats for franchise owners were involved personal updates from the ceo and followed by inspirational speakers who could speak into the organization's narrative the company held concerts on the beach just for the stakeholders and other brands who had similar missions and were discussed and publicly praised for their similar work serving customers almost immediately you could

sense a shift across the brand there was a renewed energy people hadn't been seen or heard from in years started showing up at meetings ready to lock arms again the narrative void was gone and tangible growth in less than three years the chain went from five percent growth to nearly thirty percent all with the same people who had been inside the organization all along for a billion dollar company that translated into hundreds of millions per year every year the number the number one job of an executive is to remind the stakeholders of the mission of

what the mission is over and over and yet the most executives can't really explain the overall narrative of the organization and here's the problem if an executive can't explain the story the team members will never know whether or not they fit when your culture tells a great story everybody wins a good company with a healthy culture looks something like this ready to change your company's culture a true mission isn't a statement it's a way of living and being a mission is more like token rituals that make monetary reference to things your employees should care about

a mission is something you reinforce through your every department strategy every operational detail and every customer experience that's what it means to be a company on a mission it all starts with your story brand story script we create a story brand culture program to provide a turnkey service for larger organizations to achieve a full custom implementation of their story brand brand script to weave the elements of their viral narrative into the important functions that shape culture and foster employee engagement around the mission the key we guide many organizations through a process that goes something like

this one create a story brand script with your leadership team to audit the existing thoughtful sphere three create a story brand culture implementation plan four optimize internal communications to support the plan and five install install a self-sustained team to enhance the culture people often ask how story brand culture is different from everywhere else and i think that i think they want on the list yes there are cool ideas you probably haven't seen before like using behavioral typologies to identify job fit or introducing a platform called virtual wall or cooler to foster connections between co-workers the

reality is most of the things story brand culture does look strangely similar to the things other companies do it's a that story brand culture does these things while unified around a common disciplined narrative a story brand culture turns their entire team into a sales force the main distinction between a story band culture is their attention to how their basic blocking and tackling of base business is synchronized around a storybrand brand script the brand script filters out all the noise and lets each stakeholder each day know why they're doing what they're doing when team members understand

the story of organization and how it can explain a short disciplined sound bites and can be reinforced through very varying modes of communication executives they can give potential words to customers and potential customers can use that to spread the word brief narrative ideas shared and shared from inspired team members spread faster than muddled confusing explanations shared by board disengaged employees a story brand culture honors the story of its team members when you leverage the story brand framework externally for marketing it transforms the customer value proposition when you leverage it internally for engagement it transforms the

employee value proposition all engagement rises and falls on the employee value proposition increasing compensation is one way you might add value to employees but it's just the beginning you can also raise value by improving the employee experience advancing opportunities recognize recognition meaningful work camaraderie and flexibility all of these things add value to to accomplish as many story brand brand scripts are create recreated certainly there are is external brand script that is pointed out that are certainly there is the external brand script that is pointed at the customer but there are also brand scripts created from

the perspective of the leadership to the overall team in these story brand brand scripts the team is positioned as the hero and the company leadership is positioned as the guide compensation packages leadership development organization organized events and more are the tools the leadership creates to help the employees win the day without understanding where a team's narrative is going compensation development and events are all fueling fires heading in a thousand directions we found time and time again that leaders desire to be seen as heroes when in actuality everything that they want from playing hero only comes

by playing the guide guides are respected loved listened to understood and followed loyally when they when the story of the customer of the company is aligned with the story of the team we get an alchemy that is not only profitable it's healing now i've spent several years running a company that is on a mission i can never go back there is more to life than dominating a market dominating the market is only a beautiful story if the team accomplishes such a challenging task as tied to that ambition and their own personal desires is your organization

on a mission does every stakeholder interact with understand the story of your customer and what role that organization plays in that story and do they understand their personal role in the importance of the narrative if not building your company around a compelling story may be the first step in a turnaround not just for the company but for your customers your team members and even you where there's no story there's no engagement all right guys thank you guys for listening thank you guys for watching um i'm leaving out the last last section of the book so

you guys can go pick it up yourselves um sorry my camera died links below for more books thank you guys for supporting this channel and the stream and watching the ads it all helps out this channel grow um and let me know which book you want me to read next thanks for watching