The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 142: Donald Miller - "I Will Make You Everyone's Favorite Leader"

Episode Date: July 17, 2016

Episode 142: Donald Miller - "I Will Make You Everyone's Favorite Leader" Donald Miller is a student of story. He's the author of New York Times Best Sellers: "Blue Like Jazz," "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years," and "Scary Close." He co-wrote the major motion picture "Blue Like Jazz" which debuted at the SXSW Film Festival and was listed as one of the top four movies to get you through freshman year by USA Today. He has served on The Presidential Task Force for Fatherhood and Healthy Families, a joint effort between government and the private sector to rewrite the story of fatherlessness in America. Donald Miller is a 3 time NY Times best-selling author. He has worked on Presidential campaigns, and now he helps people clearly and concisely tell their stories through live events and at StoryBrand.com  Episode 142: Donald Miller - "I'm Will Make You Everyone's Favorite Leader" Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show "We don't want to react to life. We want to impose our will upon life." In This Episode, You Will Learn: Having the ability to focus like Michael Hyatt and Bob Goff leads to sustained excellence The importance of writing it down Creating a filter to say "No" The process for creating your story -- "If you confuse, you lose" The 7 storybrand rules that Jeb Bush broke People want to hear "their" story, not yours Passing the "laptop to a caveman" test  Your website should answer 3 questions: What are you offering? How does it make my life better? How do I buy? The top right quadrant is the most important part of your website The 2 dominant things your brain does Survive and thrive Tries to conserve energy The 7 parts of a story: 1) Character 2) A problem 3) A guide 4) A plan 5) The action 6) Ends in success 7) Or failure Why "Make America Great Again" is a fantastic slogan "Every human being is looking for a guide to help them" Why empathy and authority are needed "I know how to make you the leader that everyone loves" -- What are the 3 steps to making you the leader that everyone loves Make everyone think: "What will my life be if I don't subscribe to your podcast?" "I'm going to make you everyone's favorite leader." Continue Learning: Go To: storybrand.com  Follow Donald on Twitter: @donaldmiller  Go to: 5minutemarketingmakeover.com  To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 082: Dan Pink – The Science of Motivation, Legendary Writer & Ted Talk Episode 086: Seth Godin – How To Become Indispensable & Build Your Tribe Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing Donald Miller on the show, please don't hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell Bio From Amazon.com Donald Miller is a 3 time NY Times best-selling author. He has worked on Presidential campaigns, and now he helps people clearly and concisely tell their stories through live events and at StoryBrand.com   

Every time that you try to communicate something to somebody, you are handing them a bowling ball. If I hand you a bowling ball, Ryan, it's heavy, right? And it's slick. It's kind of hard to hang on to. And then I want to communicate something else. I'm going to hand you a second bowling ball. Now you've got two bowling balls. You have one in the cradle of each arm.

Now I'm going to hand you a third, and you've got to bring your fingertips together. And they're kind of strained and your muscles are kind of strained because you've been holding these two bowling balls for a little bit. now I'm going to hand you a fourth bowling ball. When I need you that fourth bowling ball, you're going to drop all four bowling balls and walk away. So what we want to understand is hand people one bowling ball at a time. We paint all kinds of ish. I will make you everybody's favorite leader. Then, after a while, when they put the bowling ball down and they understand it and they

process it, hand them another one. Then later, you can hand them another one. but when we hand them all the bowling balls at once, it doesn't work. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk.

This episode is brought to you by Deor Design. If you've gone to learning leader.com recently, you've noticed, a massive upgrade. This is in thanks to the great leaders at Dejore Design. So if you're looking for a new website, website update, SEO, social media, email campaigns, or perhaps you need to create a logo for yourself or your business, so you're looking to redesign your logo, I cannot emphasize enough how great the people are at Deior Design to work with. I personally do not endorse or allow sponsorships of this podcast for people who I do not either buy their product or utilize them for their services.

And that is why I'm so excited to partner with at DeOre Design to sponsor the Learning Leader Show. So go to learningleader.com slash website. That's learningleader.com slash website. We'll get you connected directly with the people at DeOra Design and get a good deal for you. I promise you guys will enjoy it. Learningleader.com slash website.

Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawke. And thank you so much for being here. What an impactful conversation this was with Donald Miller. Donald is a three-time New York Times bestselling author. He's worked on presidential campaigns, and now he helps people clearly and concisely tell their stories through live events, as well as at storybrand.com. A few of the topics we got into. This was a jam-packed one.

Understanding the secret of how story works. This is a seven-step process that Donald details beautifully. And then the process for creating your story. Think, if you confuse, you will lose. Focus on simplicity. And then the two dominant things that your brain constantly does and how understanding this will help all of us when creating our stories,

an incredible conversation that I absolutely loved with Donald Miller. Don, so excited to have you here on The Learning Leader Show. So first of all, thank you for being here. I'm really, as I mentioned, excited to have you. This conversation has been more than a year. year in the works after I met with my good friend John Lowry and had him on the podcast. We talked about you and all the great work you do. So welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. I'm glad to be on.

Question around people that you've coached, you've helped, you've led, people in your peer groups, you yourself have done a great job of achieving big levels of success of excellence and not only achieving it, but then sustaining it over an extended period of time. And I'm curious, what have you found are the common themes amongst those people who have been able to sustain excellence over an extended period of time? Well, I've learned so much from a lot of them. And I even have a little day planner that I had my graphic artist create that I fill out every day. And it allows me to decide three things that I want to focus on today, three projects. And anything else kind of goes on a to do list at the bottom of the page.

But what it does for me is it, and I rarely get to three projects. I usually do one or two, but it just tells me early in the morning right after I've had a cup of coffee, what is important today? What are the two or three things that I need to move forward today? Rather than getting to 9, 10, 11 a.m. and being interrupted by phone calls and conversations and people who need something from you, I know right when I, you know, get started in the morning, these three things are what this day is about. And to me, that's been, you know, what we're talking about there is focus, right?

We're talking about being able to understand every day what's important and what is not important because our brains won't really differentiate between, you know, having to run to the bank to do something or finishing a chapter on a book. Well, finishing a chapter on the book is amazing for my career. Running to the bank is not, but your brain will treat them like they're the same. And we have to actually sit down and say, okay, what matters and what doesn't matter today. So I would attribute that to my success. That is stuff that I've learned from Michael Hyatt, you know, guys like Bob Goff, you know, all these folks who've gone before us and have done such a great job.

But it's all about focus. I think a lot of people, they hear that and they're going to say, oh, definitely. I agree. And they even might take a note of it just like I did right now, Don. And then tomorrow comes and we don't do it. What's the difference between the people? Because most of us know. but then actually executing on that, on getting things done, like David Allen would say,

and doing the most important task or two per day. Yeah, well, to me, it really is about writing it down. I mean, you know, I'm going to look it up because I know we've got this tool online. We just haven't talked about it in forever, but I can actually give it away if you want to. Yeah, cool. Let's see. Let's see. It's called the storyline productivity schedule.

and I just gave it away for free a long time ago. Let's see, if people will go to, oh, geez, well, you know what? You got to just Google storyline, storyline productivity schedule, and it pops up, and it's a really long address. It's a hidden address. But, I mean, it's probably me for 10 pages talking about how to stay productive. And then there's a bunch of sample pages that you fill out every day. They're all exactly the same.

And I'm telling you, I mean, my business doubled in revenue four years running. I put two books on the New York Times. I've, you know, all while getting married and moving from Portland, Oregon to Nashville, Tennessee. And everything changed when I created a filter through which I had given myself permission to say no. No to anything that isn't focused on these three things that are my primary objectives for this day. And, you know, that's what it's, I think there's a lot of us who just, you know, we people please, we think we have to do things that we really don't have to do. You know, it's the ringing phone syndrome, right? When there's a phone ringing in the room, you think you have to answer it.

But you really don't. Our brains are tricked into thinking that this is okay for this thing to interrupt exactly what I'm thinking about or working on or trying to do or a conversation that I'm having. And to me, the more you can not answer a ringing phone metaphorically in life. the more stuff you can get done. I think Warren Buffett even said the difference between successful people and extremely successful people is the word no.

So it's something that we have to learn. Oh, absolutely. I think that's a common theme I've found amongst, I've done 140, 150 plus of these conversations, Don on the Learning Leader show. And I feel like this is another common thread amongst the greats is that that ability to say no.

and to understand prioritize. Because I think who was it? I'm forgetting the name. Oh, it's Greg McEwen who talked about that priority somehow shifted, and this is recently to priorities, plural, in the recent years. And for hundreds of years, the word was priority, meaning you had your priority. So what is your priority? And you focused on that one thing.

And the people who are able to do that seem to find a way to a way to a job. achieve levels and to perform at higher levels than those who can't. Because I personally, this is something that I, Don, really struggle with. Something that I am working on and I should be better at it since I've heard from so many people who are good at it. But I think that kind of goes to show that a lot of people struggle with this very topic. Well, and it's something that you never stop struggling with. I mean, there is a whirlwind of activity in our lives.

But if you can take that whirlwind from guiding your life 100% to affecting your life 50%, you're going to do unbelievably well in life. You know, the key is we don't want to react to life. We want to impose our will upon life, right? I'm trying to get this thing done. I'm trying to get this book finished or I'm trying to, you know, build this business or I'm trying to spend more time with my kids. And I think too many of us are just doing what life wants us to do, which is random chaos, instead of imposing our will upon life and we've got to switch that balance a little bit. But I agree with Greg. I think, you know, I study story for a living, as you know, Ryan. And if one of the, a mistake that a lot of

screenwriters or novelists would make is they would take a protagonist and they would have that protagonist want too many things in the story. If Jason Bourne wanted to know who he was, but also lose 30 pounds, adopt a cat, finish a marathon, and marry the girl, the audience would completely check out of that movie because there's two. many story questions and they're having trouble wrestling with all those story questions. And so they get bored in the movie and they check out. Well, that's the way a lot of people feel about their lives. They feel like they're checking out.

They're bored with their life. They're confused. They don't know what the story is about. And I promise you, one of the main problems is you actually haven't sat down to decide what your life is about. And once you pair out all the other clutter and garbage out of your life and say, you know what, my life is about accomplishing these three goals this year. Now you feel like you're sitting in a movie and you're watching a story unfold that makes sense.

So we're not just talking about being productive or being successful. We're talking about mental sanity and getting rid of anxiety and confusion in our lives. Don, when you're at a dinner party and somebody who is meeting you for the first time and they shake your hand and say, hey, Don, what do you do? How do you respond? Well, I have what's called a one-liner about my company because that's really a question about my company. But I usually say a lot of business leaders struggle to talk about what they do. We have a seven-part process that helps them clarify their message so that their business grows. That's what I say.

And it's just a, we teach businesses to create those one-liners so they actually have something to say in an elevator or at a cocktail party. And a lot of people, when you ask, what do you do? They'll him and hall about how their grandfather started the company or they work and they'll use inside language that nobody understands. and somebody will walk away from him at the dinner party, and they won't even ask for a business card because they don't even understand what that guy does or how it relates to their life. So that's what I say,

and that's what I spend most of my time, about 90% of my time, is thinking about how to help people clarify their message, so people engage that message, understand what it is that this person sells and why it's important to them. And all of that language translates into better websites, better email blast, better television commercials if you're a larger company, better sales scripts

for your sales team. Translates into dollar bills, honestly, translates into the bottom line. I think so many people, again, struggle with this. You obviously know this is your business and you've done extremely well. The testimonials on your website alone are incredible from really high producing people that you would think, oh, those guys don't even need any help. And they're saying that the work that you've done with them, Don, has quadrupled their revenue. and made their business better. So I've done this a few times. Maybe I should have asked you before we started,

but I immediately start thinking maybe you could help me. And that could be a way that other people listening could maybe they could draw from it and they could apply to whatever they're doing to. So I'll give you just a little bit of background. Again, maybe you should have checked, but this is how it goes sometimes. We just riff. So my website's learning leader.com. It's called The Learning Leader Show, 140, 150 plus episode.

now. It's gone really well. One of the couple of things that have happened since the podcast has started is I'm getting many opportunities to go and speak. And usually the way this request comes in, Don, is, hey, I really like your podcast. Will you come speak to my group, whatever it is, whether it's college athletes, a corporation at a business, certain groups of people, whatever it may be. And I want to clarify my story and my message better. I think I've done okay at it, but I know if I got help from the guy himself, maybe I could be even better. And since the way you just said, I help, this is what we do, I thought, well, maybe we could just live riff and then other people could gain some insight from that as well.

Yeah, sounds great, right? So how does that process work? Could you walk me through it? I mean, what would do? Sure. I mean, you know, one of the first things we do is we take a look at somebody's web page, for example. Okay.

And they think their web page is saying one thing when actually what people are seeing when they go to their web page is something else, something that's confusing. And there's a mantra. around our story brand office, and it's this, if you confuse, you'll lose. Meaning, if you confuse anybody about what you do or what you offer, they will pass you up without inquiring for more information. So we cannot speak over their heads. We cannot speak in complicated terms. Here's an example, Ryan.

Let me just ask you two questions. And they're going to be very revealing. What does Donald Trump right now, and this is being recorded after the primaries, Donald Trump is about to, enter into the general election against Hillary Clinton, so who knows what happens in the future. But it is an absolute mystery to a lot of people that a outside businessman has secured the Republican nomination for president. But let me ask you this. What does Donald Trump want to do for America? Make America great again. Okay. And the reason you know that, there's a couple reasons you know that.

One, it's printed on hats that he wears all the time. Second, he repeats it over and over. And third, it's just easy to remember, right? And that's called branding. Branding is taking simple, relevant statements and repeating them over and over and over and over. Let me ask you this. 15 minutes can save you 15% on what? Geico.

Car insurance. Right. You knew the brand immediately. Right. Why? Because they branded it. A lot of companies try to have, you know, simple messages, but they end up being very complicated. every time they say what they do, they say it differently.

That's not branding. Anybody who's ever branded a cow, and I have a friend who has a ranch, and I went out and branded cattle with them once. And it's an aggressive, smelly process. You've got to lay over the back of the heifer. You got to grab the branding iron, and you smell the flesh burning when you do it. Luckily, these cows aren't as sensitive as we are physically,

and so they don't even act like they're getting hurt. But it is a messy, intentional smelly process. But if I took that brand, branded the back of that cow, and then I took a different brand, designed differently, and put it right over the top of the other brand, and then a different one and put it right over the top of the other brand. Every time that you say what you do in a different way, that's what you're doing. You're branding in it. And all it does is create so much confusion that I have no idea what that brand is. So let me ask you another question. What does Jeb Bush want to do with America?

I don't know. I don't either. So, Ryan, who's still in the race? Donald Trump. Donald Trump communicates at a fourth grade level. Jeb Bush communicates at an eighth grade level. Now, we actually consulted with the Bush campaign. I flew to Miami and met with their team and, you know, they were breaking.

There are seven story brand rules that you cannot break if you want to grow your company. You just can't break them. Jeb was breaking almost all of them. That blows my. That blows my mind. I mean, you think like the brightest and best, especially with, I mean, his family has been, two of them have been the president of the free world. I mean, the leader of the free world. And the two who were elected president did not break these rules.

Wow. Okay. He's very complicated. He played the hero in the story rather than the guide. One of the big paradigm shifts for story brand is always play the guide, never play the hero. The customer is the hero. You know, we've got to communicate simply. He was introducing himself to the public, bringing his wife around.

the story was all about him. People don't want to hear your story. They don't want to know your story. They want to hear their story. And so we've got to come in and say, hey, I know everybody listening to the sound of my voice wants this. And yet you struggle with this. And it makes you feel this way. I want to help you through that. I've been there myself. I've figured out a solution. Let me give you that solution. It's actually a three-part solution. Here's part one, part two, part three. In order to engage the solution, you need to do this. And if you don't do this, Things are going to go really bad, but we don't want that to happen. We want things to go really great. We want your life to look this way. That is a seven-part story framework that every business needs to understand and fill in their own components as it relates to their business. And it is the key to doubling, tripling, and quadrupling your business if you have a really good product. Okay.

Let me ask you a couple other questions, Ryan. Okay. Jim Collins would be known for helping people go from what to what? Good to great. There you go. Stephen Covey might be a guy that you'd sit and talk to if you wanted to become more what? Better leader. Better leader, more productive.

More productive, yeah. Ken Blanchard would be a guy that you would want to talk to about what? Again, I think of him as another leadership guy. Leadership management, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, if you're branding yourself, Ryan, as a leadership guy, I think learning leader is a great way to do it. I mean, you know, you've set it in your podcast where a lot of people,

they might have named their podcast something more difficult to comprehend. You could even tighten that up. You know, when I hear learning leader, I think of, you know, a leader who learns, but I guess I translate it into your educating leaders, right? That's one way to do. Now, am I accurate? Am I accurate? So it's funny because actually this is not the first time I heard this. And maybe this is part of this could be a problem. I don't mean to, I mean, one, it's kind of as the fact that I believe all great leaders are constant learners. Like I think of John Wooden being age 99 and reading books every single day because

he says the day you stop learning is the day that you die, regardless of age. And so like a learning leader to me as someone is a leader who is constantly working to improve, to learn to get better. Yeah, that's great. That, that I think, you know, you want to be able to say that, you know, very clearly. There should never be a question about what you have to offer me, right? And so, you know, that that would be one thing to really clarify. I'm looking at your, I'm looking at your website now, the Learning Leaders Show with Ryan Hawk, inhale knowledge, exhale success.

you know, this is not bad. This is so much better than almost any client that we deal with. But you really want something. When I go to your website, I want your website to pass what we call the grunt test. Okay. And so the grunt test is me handing my laptop to a caveman in a cave. So let's picture this caveman. And he's sitting there.

And I'm going to give this caveman five seconds. Literally, I'm going to count to five. And then I'm going to close the laptop. So he had five seconds to look at your website. He needs to be able to answer three questions. That is, what are you offering? How will it make his life better? And what does he need to do to buy it or engage it?

Those three questions. In five seconds, if people go to your website and they can't answer those three questions, in five seconds, you're losing sales. So when I go to your website, I see the Learning Leaders Show with Ryan Hawk, inhale knowledge, exhale success. And then you've got some testimonies that are kind of long, and they're scrolling through the bottom of the page. So I'm probably not going to read those. They do have a subconscious level effect of saying, hey, people like this guy. Other people are talking about it.

That's powerful stuff. But I'm probably not going to read those. In fact, they're scrolling so fast I can't read them because in the middle of reading them, they're scrolling. So that would be another kind of mistake. The other thing is inhale knowledge, Excel success means I have to do. do a little bit more math in my brain to figure out how that applies to me. Okay. If you, so one of the clients that we worked with was a guy named Kyle Schultz and Kyle

has the online photography school. It was a part-time job for him. He's a fireman. But he wanted to stop being a fireman. All he wanted to do was his photography school. He narrowed down his focus after going through Storybrand so that he was only going to do a photography school for parents who wanted to take better pictures of their kids. You go to his website now after Storybrand.

and it says, I'll help you take better pictures of your kids, right? And then instead of saying things like, I'll teach you how to use F-stop, he translated after going through Storybrand, I'll teach you how to take those beautiful pictures where the background is fuzzy. Okay? Before Story Brand, he launches his course three times a year. Before Story Brand, he made $20, I believe, $8,000 in a launch. That's pretty awesome for a part-time gig, right? As a fireman.

He bought the Story Brand online course. and stayed up all night the night before his second launch. Now, he's emailing the exact same list. So he's already burned this list. You would think he'd do much less, but he clarified all his language, cut 90% of the words off of his website. And he did $103,000 the next day. The difference was people could finally understand what he offered,

how it was going to make their life better, and what they needed to do to buy it. A couple things on your website. The top right quadrant is the dominant real estate of your website. That is where the eye goes. The eye moves in a Z. You have contact. I would have put in a different color a big button that says subscribe now.

And then I'd put the same image, the Learning Leaders Show with Ryan Hawk, and I would say, I want to make you the best leader in the world, you know, or something like that. Or tips that will make you everybody's favorite leader. Well, then I go, what's in it for me? I'm going to become everybody's favorite leader. Does that make sense? Exhale success is a little bit more vague than I'm going to make you everybody's favorite leader. So there's two things that everybody listening to me needs to know about the human brain.

And this is critical. This is going to make huge changes in your decisions and communication from here on now. The two dominant things that the human brain are trying to do. one is the human brain is tasked with helping you survive and thrive. So we're basically talking about Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. First, food and shelter, once that's covered, which it is for most of us, we go on thinking about other things. Social relationships, reproduction, building a tribe that will be my friends and defend

me if the barbarians come over the hill, status, you know, all that kind of stuff that is directly associated with me surviving, thriving, moving ahead in life, being emotionally and psychologically nurtured in relationships. Subconsciously, our brain is always trying to think about those things. Now, the second thing is really what gets important. The second thing that the brain is trying to do is it's trying not to burn very many calories. Isn't that weird?

Really? Yeah. Your brain is trying to conserve energy because it takes an enormous amount of energy. to think. So what happens is those two things that the brain are trying to do are they kind of contend with each other because here I am trying to survive and thrive, but I'm also trying to not think too hard because if I think too hard, I put myself in danger and I'm vulnerable to attack, right? Because my brain is too tired to think. So what that means is when you and I communicate in a confusing way, the people that we're talking to are designed to tune us out. Why?

Because they can't figure out how what we're saying is going to help them survive or thrive. So the brain says, you know what? We've given this guy five minutes. Let's start daydreaming and conserve energy because the barbarians may come over the hill and we're going to have to plug in our minds to fight those barbarians and this guy isn't making sense. But when you can actually say, I'm going to help you survive, thrive, be loved by people, make more money, become a more attractive person, like yourself more. All that fits into this, survive, thrive, and the brain goes, this guy's saying something I need, I'm going to start paying attention. And it will burn those calories in order to do that. Now, the other thing that we can do is when what we have helps

people survive and thrive, but we communicate in a very confusing way. We use a lot of inside language, for instance, I'll teach you how to do F-stop, right? Yeah. That is causing people to burn calories too. And so we want to do two things. We want to always be talking about, at least in our marketing collateral, what we have to offer people that will help them survive and thrive, and we want to do so in the most simple language possible. How do you do that? Simple, repeatable, brief statements in your marketing collateral. Now, what you deliver on that. The podcast is much more, you know, people are in at that point, right? But in order to get them in, you really want it to be all about them and how it's going to benefit them in the long run.

So that's – and we have a seven-part framework that's based on 2,000 years of stories that help people filter down their message into the seven critical components of messaging that all help people learn how to survive or help people communicate in such a way that they're saying I'm going to help you survive and thrive. and to do so in such way that nobody's having to burn too many calories to understand. Would it take too much time to get to cover some of those or all the seven? I'd be more than happy to go through them. Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay. So I'm going to start by saying, here's how a story works.

And then I'm going to translate it into why that matters for your marketing and branding and why that honestly will help you just cut all the garbage off your website and grow your business and all that other kind of stuff. Okay, here's how the story works. And people are just know, you know, you're going to want to hit the rewind button a bunch of times because I'm going to move quick and we're going to drink from a fire hydrant. But here it goes. I'm going to ask you to burn a bunch of calories basically. Good.

A story is this. It is a character who has a problem who meets a guide that gives them a plan and calls them to action that either ends in a success or failure. Okay? Seven components. a character that has a problem who meets a guide that gives them a plan and calls them to action that either ends in a success or failure. All right. What is that?

That is Tommy Boy, Star Wars, Bridget Jones Diary, the King's Speech, Moneyball, you name it. I mean, I can't think of any movie that that seven-part formula isn't there. This is a 2,000-year-old formula that has worked since Aristotle. and it is the equivalent of music. I mean, the brain just engages it. In fact, the American spent $10 billion at the movies last year sitting in the dark theater watching that exact formula over and over and over. The brain loves it.

And so we need to understand it. But what does that have to do with our marketing? Well, first, there's a character, right? We need to know who our character is and define what it is they want. what does our character want? What is our customer want? When we define that, we engage our customer in a story question because as soon as I say, you know, story brand customers want to increase their business, they want to grow their business by creating a clear message. Well, that posits a story question in a potential customer's brain. Can Don help me clarify my message and grow my business? And what does

he have to do to find out? He has to come to a story brand workshop, right? So that's the first key. So when you say, I'm going to make you everybody's favorite leader, what story question is posited in the brain of a potential person who might subscribe to your podcast? Can I stop you for a second? Yeah, please. Do you, is that, um, was that just the first thing that came to your mind to make you everyone's favorite leader or are we purposely trying to, in a way, turn it into a fourth graders type language? Like a, and I'm not saying like Donald Trump, but kind of like Donald Trump. Yes. We are trying to turn it.

With fourth grade language. I'm looking at storybrand.com slash workshop your website and says, clarify your message so people engage. Connect with customers, revolutionize your marketing, grow your company. And then register now and watch video. And you have this video playing behind that of people, you know, it looks like you're filming at a workshop. You're in it for part of it, but not that much is usually other people who are talking and engaging. So when you say, like, I want to make you everyone's favorite. leader, regardless of whatever we end up, because I am going to take your advice and

do it. I'm going to work on this. I don't know if that's the exact phrase or is that, like, are you thinking like, yeah, that is the phrase that or is that just the first thing that came to mind? There are probably, Ryan, for you, about 5,000 great phrases to choose from. You know what I mean? That's one of the problems with our process is people think, well, what's the right answer? And it's like, no, this is a creative process.

It's like saying, what's the right chorus for my song? I mean, but some do connect better than others. And the one that's going to connect is the one that somebody can say, I want that. This is something that will make my life better. This is something that will help me survive and thrive, right? So to exhale success is a little, it's causing me to burn, you know, eight more mental calories to connect exhaling success to my survival. Okay. But when you say, I'm going to make you everybody's favorite leader, I don't have to burn any calories to understand how that's going to help me survive and thrive.

Does that make sense? Absolutely does. So we just want to take it to the next level. We want to do the thinking for our customers so that they don't have to do the thinking themselves. The less we asked them, the fewer calories we asked them to burn, the more likely they are to engage our brand. Gotcha.

Now, this doesn't mean, you know, I'm not a fan of Donald Trump, for example. I mean, I admire his success story and all the kind of stuff. But, you know, I don't think he tells the truth. and I think he simplifies the narrative beyond recognition, you know, because the truth is, the truth is often, it takes a nuanced understanding. I hope I'm not teaching bad people to be manipulative, right? What I hope I'm doing is teaching really good people who have really good products and something really beautiful to offer the world, a way of communicating in such a simple way that people

actually engage those beautiful products. And I want to help the good guys tell better stories, basically. And so, you know, part of that is identifying. something that our customer wants. Now, there are two mistakes that brands often make at this level of the story brand process. One is they don't identify something that a customer wants. Instead, they talk about how their grandfather started the business, which nobody cares about. The second is they identify 27 things that their customer wants.

Well, that's the equivalent of going into a movie and Jason Bourne wanting to know who he is and run a marathon and marry the girl and lose 30 pounds and adopt a cat. People will disengage from your story. But I hear everybody listening to this podcast saying, but Don, our customer is really want 27 things and, you know, how can we pick? And I would say, you know, first of all, you're going to have to pick something to lead with. You know, when somebody goes to your website, let's say it's the equivalent of a first date. You don't want to say on the first date. Remember when we were dating back in the day, Ryan? And, you know, I don't know about you.

I got married at 42. So I made a lot of mistakes, right? And it took me a long time to figure it out. But you would never say on the first date, hey, I'm glad you went out with me. Can I just tell you about me. You know, I really like my job. I like my house. I'm really hoping to get married some day. I'd like to have kids. Would you like to have kids? You know, when should we get married? That's way. All you want to do, and I learn the hard way is brush your hair and brush your teeth and try not to talk, right? Just get to the second date. So let's think about your website as the first date. This doesn't mean that you can't tell people that you do 27 things. It just means if you want them to come back, you got to hook them with a very simple

hook. You know, I'm going to make America great again. Fifteen minutes can save you 15% on car insurance, you know, those kinds of things where people would remember it and come back. And so I think a lot of people, they basically start their marketing on the fifth or sixth date. And people go, you know, just too much information. And so we want to identify one thing that the customer wants. Now let me give you an example of the next pushback that people are going to say. They're going to say, we have three dominant revenue streams and how do we have. We have three dominant revenue streams. And and how do we communicate that on one website, and this is getting complicated? It's not that hard.

It's not rocket science. We don't want to overthink this. We had one client who was an industrial painter, and he had three rodent streams. He powder-coated auto parts, made a ton of money doing that. He had a concrete sealant that he could go in and spray on concrete like your driveway and city sidewalks and all that kind of stuff and protect the concrete. And he also had a sterilized hospital painting process. So hospitals would bring him in, and he could do painting, and it would be a sterilized

process. That's three really dominant revenue streams. So how in the world do communicate that on his website? So he kind of pushed back during a workshop. And I asked him, I said, hey, can I just throw your website on the screen? Big screen, you know, 50 business leaders in the room. He said, sure. So he put his website on the big screen. And on his website, he had a painting, like an artist had painted a painting of his building. Well, what are you communicating with a painting of your building? First of all, it looked like an Italian restaurant. So I got his website. It looks like an Italian restaurant. The first thing I'm thinking is, do you have free breadsticks? right so how do I make a reservation?

And then he had all sorts of links about the charities that he supported. He was a wonderfully generous man. He had about a $10 million business. He's very proud of the charities that he supported and he loved these people. And I think that's great too. But you have just downloaded so much confusing information in my brain in five seconds that now not only do you have to explain to me what you do, but you have to deconstruct my first impression of you.

You don't have to educate me that you are not an Italian restaurant and you don't have free breadsticks and you're not a charity. In fact, you do paint, you paint things, right? So I asked people in the audience, I said, listen, raise your hand if you think our friend, our generous friend here, would dramatically increase his business. If he took this website completely down and he just had a picture of a guy and a lap coat, a white lab coat painting something with what looks like a very complicated piece of equipment. And then the words, very big across that picture.

that said, we paint all kinds of shit. Get a quote. And everybody in the room raised their hand, right? Because I know what you do. And I know, and I need somebody to paint something for me, right? And if you paint all kinds of stuff, then you powder code auto parts. You do concrete seal it. And you do hospitalized hospital.

Which he can spell out in three different sections as I scroll down the page, right? But I need to know that quick, what you do and what it will do for my life. We have to identify what our customers want. What does this customers want? They want something painted. And now they have a question. Can you paint this? And when I say you paint all kinds of ish, forgive my language, that means you paint just about anything.

You've answered the question for me. So the question is, can you paint this thing for me? I go to your website, we paint all kinds of ish. I think the chances are very, very likely that you're going to be able to paint this random thing that I need you to paint. And I'm going to ask you for a – and what do you want me to do in order to find out? get a quote. No confusing pictures of images or paintings of your building. No tons of links everywhere all over your page that go to nowhere. It's just too much information. I want everybody listening, if you get one thing from this interview to understand, every time that you try to

communicate something to somebody, you are handing them a bowling ball. If I hand you a bowling ball, Ryan, it's heavy, right? And it's slick. It's kind of hard to hang on to. And then I want to communicate something else. I'm going to hand you a second bowling ball. Now you've got two bowling balls. You have one in the cradle of each arm. Now I'm going to hand you a third. And you've got to bring your fingertips together.

And they're kind of strained and your muscles are kind of strained because you've been holding these two bowling balls for a little bit. Now I'm going to hand you a fourth bowling ball. When I need you that fourth bowling ball, you're going to drop all four bowling balls and walk away. So what we want to understand is hand people one bowling ball at a time. We paint all kinds of ish. I will make you everybody's favorite leader.

Then, after a while, when they put the bowling ball down and they understand it and they process it, hand them another one. Then later, you can hand them another one. But when we hand them all the bowling balls at once, it doesn't work. So define what our customer wants. And second, we need to define their challenges. Now, there are three levels of problems that our customers and heroes in stories and movies deal with. we need to understand all three levels of problems. And we don't have time to explain them, but I'll just say there's the external problem.

That's the physical problem that you solve. There's the internal problem, which is the real reason customers buy. That's how these problems are making them feel. People are coming to you not just to solve a problem. They're coming to you to stop a frustration that that problem is manifesting in them. Companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but human beings buy solutions to internal problems. Does that make sense? So, for instance, I want to make you the leader that everybody loves.

You'll feel confident and assured walking into any meeting. Well, now you just aim something at the way I feel about myself. And that is the problem that I'm trying to resolve. So you've hit me on the external level and the internal level. And there's a third level philosophical, but it's a little bit complicated to understand right now. But the next thing that happens is a guide shows up in this story because we know that the hero is not going to, to be able to solve their problems on their own. So since the days of Aristotle, they brought in this bit character who's really fun,

and the character just guides the hero through their struggles. We're talking about Yoda, Obi-One-Kinobi, Haymitch on Hunger Games. We're talking about Lionel in the King's speech. We're talking about Peter Brand and Moneyball. The guide has one purpose. It is to help the hero believe in themselves and equip them to go and win the day. So the huge story brand paradigm shift is never position yourself as the hero, always position yourself as the guide.

Every human being is looking for a guide to help them. And let me prove it. John McCain is a war hero. Literally was tortured for three years, shot down in Vietnam, was not elected president. In fact, he was beaten by a guy with no military experience. Bob Dole was a war hero, was beaten by a guy with limited military experience. John Kerry was a war hero. He was beaten by a guy with limited military experience.

Why? Because Americans don't look for heroes. They look for guides. We honor heroes. We love heroes. We respect heroes. But when it comes to choosing somebody to lead us, we're always going to choose a guide. Why?

Well, it's because every person wakes up and self-identifies as the hero protagonist in his story. And when I'm the hero protagonist, it means I'm trying to accomplish something and all these challenges are against me. And Ryan, you walk into the room and you say, Hi, my name is Ryan, and I have this podcast, and it's really amazing, and my grandfather started the podcast years ago on the radio, and, you know, I'm now releasing the podcast on vinyl, and I've got a goal to double my revenue and blah, blah, blah. Well, what are you saying? You're saying that you're a hero.

Well, subconsciously, what I hear is I'm a hero, and Ryan's a hero. And I'm actually genuinely curious as to how Ryan's story is going to work out. And I think to myself, this guy's a really nice guy. I hope his story works out really great. I do wish she would step aside because I'm looking for a guide. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. This is the biggest problem that brands make.

They think they need to talk about themselves. They don't. They need to talk about the customer. So position ourselves as the guide. There are two things that the guide needs to do, and we impact us at the workshop. We unpack, by the way, everything I'm talking about in 16 hours. So we're just railing through it. The guide needs to express empathy and authority.

You need to care and have statements that are caring and understanding and empathetic about your customer's internal problem, but you also need to demonstrate authority. Not too much because you can browbeat people, but you need to demonstrate competency. I know how to make you the leader that everybody loves. In fact, I've done it for over 500 leaders. That's the sort of statement that we're looking for. Then they need a plan. The guide needs to give the hero a plan. And we like three-step plans.

What are the three steps for me becoming the leader? that everybody likes. And you say, Don, I can't do that. There are 27 steps. Well, let's break it into three phases. The brain is attracted to the number three, buying peaks when there are three options or three steps or three. When you go to four, it decreases a little bit.

When you go to five, it decreases dramatically. Why? Because you're asking people to burn too many calories to understand how you can get them from point A to point B. We have all sorts of plans that we talk about in the storyroom process. Then there is the call to action. It is a general story principle that heroes and stories do not take action on their own. They have to be challenged to take action.

This is also true in our marketing. When we don't on our website and our elevator pitch and our keynote and our one-liner at a cocktail party, in our email blasts, in our television commercial, when we don't make it very clear what you need to do in order to resolve your problem, which means when we don't have at the top right of our website, buy now, or subscribe now. People don't know. We think they're going to intuitively figure it out because it seems obvious to us. It does not seem obvious to them.

You know, when people don't put Buy Now on their website, it reminds me of those, you know, going back to dating, it reminds me of all the girls that I drove crazy by taking them to coffee and taking them to the movies and hanging out and all that kind of stuff. And I really liked them. But I never actually said, let's go on a date. And all these girls would always finally say,

what do you want, right? But when I got older and more mature and honestly became more of a gentleman, I would say, and this is how I got my wife, Betsy, would you like to go on a date with me? So there is no mystery in her mind of what's going on and what I actually want. I think it's the same with business. We need to say, I want you to buy this. I want you to subscribe to this podcast because I'm going to help you become the leader that everybody loves. Of course I'm subscribing that podcast. Who doesn't want to be the leader that everybody loves, right? But I've got to have subscribe now and big old bold do this so that you can become the leader that everybody loves. That way, there's no mystery. I'm not sitting here having coffee with Ryan Hawk wondering what

the world is this about. Where is this guy trying to take me? Right. And so, and by the way, I'm not picking on you. This is every company that we deal with. No, this is what I want, man. This is awesome. And the reality is, Ryan, I'm going to be confessional here. Storybrand is the only company that story brand cannot help because we are so close to our own stuff. We think we understand what we're saying. We're not. So we actually hire outside consultants all the time to say, are we being clear?

And sometimes they say, no, actually you're not being clear. And we have to come back because, you know, we get hooked into this inside language that we think people understand. They actually don't understand it.

So, you know, the call to action is very clear. And then it's got to be spelled out, what will my life look like, Ryan, if I don't subscribe to your podcast. If I don't subscribe to your podcast, I'm going to continue frustrating people as a leader.

I'm going to continue confusing my teams. I'm going to probably not move up in my career and on and on and on. And there are even familial consequences. My family may suffer if I don't become the leader that everybody loves. You mean write this out? You'd put this on your website. You would put this. There's all sorts of ways you could use it.

You can make it a blog entry. You can put it in bullet points on the website. You could use it as a slide and a keynote. whatever, it is an element in the story structure that you want sprinkled like salt throughout the recipe. Now, I say salt because you actually don't use a lot of salt in recipes. And in authority, when we're talking, I'm sorry, we're talking about failure that the negative ending that will happen to you if you don't do this, you don't want to overdo that because

you'll come off as manipulative. But if it's missing, there is no story. If I have a story about a guy who needs to disarm a bomb and 15 minutes in the story, the guy gets a call and says, hey, you know that bomb that you need to disarm? it's a dud. It's actually not going to explode. And then he spends the next 90 minutes trying to disarm it. I've got no story. So you have to have some consequence to not doing business with you. But success, the happy ending that you're trying to lead people to, that's not a pinch of salt. That's cups and cups of flour. We need lots of it. I need you to keep telling me and keep

casting a vision for what my life can look like if I engage your products and services. Those are the seven elements of stories, and I think they're the seven elements of good marketing, clear good marketing. And in my opinion, if every image, word, button on your website doesn't come from one of those seven elements. You are creating noise and you're confusing people. You're asking them to burn too many calories and they're going to check out. So this is what you guys go through over 16 hours down in Nashville. Yeah, we have about 50 business leaders of. month who come to Nashville and take two days to create these seven messages of their own.

And then we look at every one of their websites and critique them and talk about what they can do differently. That's something we do in Nashville. We have an online course that people can go through and then we do private workshops where I meet for a day and a half with companies and I take them through the process I just took you through in an hour and a half in 90 minutes. And then we spend the next day and a half actually mapping out what their website would look like in their email would say and lead generators and PDS and all that kind of stuff. And it is a blast. I feel like I get to start a new business every week and then just hand it to somebody. Because these, you know, I mean, you know these guys. Ryan, their hearts bleed for their businesses. They love their companies.

They love their customers. They love their products. They love their teams. It's just that one missing piece. How do we say it? Why aren't we spreading? Why aren't people engaging us? And it's because you're confusing them. And it takes an outside presence sometimes to come in and say, hey, let's go through this filter and clarify this message so that people start understanding what it is you offer and begin to engage. Man, this is, Don, I have to tell you that 100, like I said, 140, 150 plus of these conversations, I've never taken more notes than I have on this conversation. You've beat the old records I've said. I'm a big note taker. I've never taken more. That's a fact. I'll send you a picture of it if you want. But I mean, I really truly appreciate this this one-on-one training.

And I think it was you told the story enough that I could apply to every single person listening. I think you're going to, this one will have to be listened to multiple times. There's a lot of note-taking. So thank you so much for doing it. Where would you send everybody to learn more about you and what you guys do online? Well, if you want to come to a workshop, just go to storybrand.com. But I also have a free resource that. It's really fantastic. It's just three five-minute videos that walk you through in very practical terms, a lot of the stuff that we just talked about. And that's at five-minute marketing makeover.com.

You can either spell it out or use the number. It doesn't matter. It'll redirect to the same place. Five-minute marketing makeover.com. And I actually show you in the third video the before and after of Governor Jeb Bush's website. And I'm telling you, it is night and day after we worked with him. And he did drop out of the race, but we got him from 3%. to 10% within about less than two months.

And then, of course, he dropped out in South Carolina. But night and day difference in his messaging. I find it fascinating. So just go to 5-minute marketing makeover.com. That's pretty cool about that. Jebs. I didn't realize that. And to see the impact that you guys had, it's almost been like, what if you would have

been with him the whole time? Well, you know, we would have. Jeb is, I love the Bush family. Pierce is a good friend of mine. And I think Jeb would be a great president. I liked Marco Rubio. I worked in the Obama White House for a little bit. I'm kind of all over the place, but I do self-identify as a Republican,

mostly for business reasons. I think the government is very, very hard on entrepreneurs. I think it's very hard on businesses. I think we punish people for succeeding. And I think when you, I mean, you're a business guy, Ryan. What would happen to your company if you punished everybody who succeeded in your company? You would go bankrupt. So I don't know why we're doing that as a country.

It makes no sense to me. I think we're creating a victim state in our business. country and that's being led by the left. But I also understand there are people who live in poverty. There are people who need help. There are people who need opportunities. I'm not, I'm not an ignorant guy. But, you know, with Jeb, I wanted him to win. But I also would say, you know, if you see things from so many different perspectives and you have a tendency to wander into the weeds and you have a tendency to walk into a meeting without a very clear, firm agenda, you know, we don't need Vladimir Putin meeting with our president and walking around going, I have no idea

what he wanted. It wasn't very clear. Being clear is a very, very important part of leadership. If your team doesn't know where you're going, they've lost the plot in the store. And so, you know, we have to know what our teams, we have to identify. Here's an ambition. Here's where we're going. We have to identify the challenges.

We have to empathize with their struggles as team leaders. We have to have a very well-crank. crafted and understood plan. We have to continually call our teams to action. We have to remind them of what life will look like if we do not accomplish these goals. And we have to cast a vision for what life will look like if we do accomplish these goals. Those seven-part framework, that that seven-part framework that creates a great story and also clarifies our marketing is also a fantastic tool to use to become the kind of leader everybody likes, which is what you're in the business of doing. Man, this is great. Thank you so much, Don. I know we won a little bit over,

but I'm so appreciative. My pleasure, man. I geek out on this stuff, and I'm always grateful to anybody who'll listen, Ryan. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, and I certainly, this is not going to be the last time we talk, man. We're going to be continuing this dialogue, and I probably need to get down to Nashville for the full 16 hours. Come on. I'll be talking to you after this about it because that would be extremely helpful.

You certainly piqued my interest in a big way. And John Lowry, my buddy, like I mentioned, has already spoken so highly of you. I make sure you say hi to him. the next time you see him for me. But again, thanks so much, Don, for being here. Storybrand.com, five-minute marketing makeover.com. I really appreciate it. Look forward to continue our dialogue as we both progress.

Appreciate it, Ryan. All right. Thanks so much. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete or anyone else that inspires you.

You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show.