The School of Greatness - 332 The Power of Storytelling with Donald Miller

Episode Date: May 23, 2016

"The only way that we actually change is by overcoming hard things." - Donald Miller If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/332

This is episode number 332 with New York Times best-selling author Donald Miller. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Write down things you want to improve.

Write down things you won't tolerate from yourself. Write down things you never want to see yourself do again. Be the hero of your own movie. Write down things you never want to see yourself do again. Be the hero of your own movie. That was from Joe Rogan. Welcome, everyone, to this very special episode with Donald Miller. I'm very excited about what we just connected on, and I think you're going to get a lot out of this one. I just did a workshop down in Nashville, Tennessee for a company down there. Had a great time doing a two-hour interactive workshop with some of the top dentists in the country and really

got to connect with people and hear their stories. You know, made it really interactive. It was more about the audience than about me going on stage and sharing my story. And afterwards, I got to connect with Donald Miller and really dive in a little deeper about the power of story and really how our own story is important, but really in our businesses, in our lives, how making other people the hero of the story is the most important thing, making it about other people and how can we do this in our own lives, in our relationships, in our businesses. And we really dive in about this. We really dive in deeper in this episode. Now, for those of you who don't know who Donald Miller is, he is a student of story. He's the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Blue Light Jazz, also A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and the most recent book,

Scary Close. 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. And currently, he helps people live a better story and helps leaders grow their businesses at storybrand.com. And in this interview, we break down a number of things, including how changing the story you tell about your business can increase your customers and sales. Also, why your customer should be the hero of the story, the seven questions that every business owner needs to answer for their customers to understand their story in a simple way, the importance of growing relationships outside

of your business, what it was like for Donald to grow up without his father, and then the reunion that he had with his father many years later. We also talk a lot more about intimacy in one of his latest books called Scary Close. We go in pretty deep here. So I hope you guys enjoy this one. And also we did a full video interview with Donald in his home in Nashville when I was there this past weekend and have some incredible photos of him and his dog Lucy and also got some incredible photos of him in the backyard by his writing shed with his dog.

And just had an incredible time. So make sure to check out these beautiful photos. The full video interview as well is back at lewishouse.com slash 332. And without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only, Donald Miller. Welcome back and more to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest today, Don Miller. Good to see you, man. Very good to see you.

And thanks for having me in your home. Yeah, welcome. It's nice. We're really glad you're here. We're here. We're hanging out. Lucy's enjoying the scenery. She's holding down the fort.

And I'm very excited. We met through Michael Hyatt probably like eight to ten months ago. There was a dinner that we called the Nashville Mafia. And me and you were both there. I was the only one not from Nashville that was invited to the dinner. That was an amazing night. It was a cool night, right? Jeremy Cowart was there.

Rory Vaden was there. Jeff Goins. John Acuff was there. Yes. Josh Axe. Yeah. And I now, I think that's where I met Rory, too. And Rory and I was there, Jeff Coins, John Acuff was there. Yes, Josh Axe. Yeah, and I now, I think that's where I met Rory too, and Rory and I are now friends. He's an amazing guy, does amazing stuff, and you and I are friends.

Yes. Mike brought us all together. It was kind of nice. Brought us all together, and I really didn't know much about you until that night, and then I was researching more, and you're a three-time New York Times bestseller. Your first book was called Blue Light Jazz, right? That's right. I'm so grateful for that book. Like 15 years ago.

And it sold like a million copies or something crazy. Something like that. Yeah. It's that one-hit wonder. It's like, it's my fire and rain. Right, right, right. Yeah, it works for you. It works.

You just say, give me one hit. So you wrote that book. And then I heard from Nigel that you were going to create a movie out of it or write a movie script. That's right. But then they said it was a boring movie. Yeah. They said my life was too boring to be turned into a movie, so we had to make things up. And then you decided to write the second book, right?

Well, that book is about having screenwriters come in and edit your life to make it more interesting. writers come in and edit your life to make it more interesting. So the premise of that book is, what if you actually lived more interesting in the first place using techniques that storytellers have used over thousands of years to have a meaningful life? And that book, I mean, the stuff that happened so that I could write that book changed everything for me. So what happened? I mean, you... Well, like in a movie, Lewis, you know, a character needs to be, they need to have a single focused desire to accomplish a thing or the movie won't work. So if Jason Bourne wants to.

They need a goal. They need a vision. They need a goal. So if Jason Bourne wants to know who he is and also marry the girl and also lose 30 pounds and also run a marathon, you lose the audience. And so what I learned from that was I can't wake up every day and wonder what today is going to be about unless I'm intentionally taking a weekend off and, you know, exploring that kind of mental space. I've got to wake up every day and go, no, this is the

overall goal that we're trying to accomplish. This is where life is heading. I need a filter so that I can say, you know, I'm not going to do this because it doesn't help me accomplish this, which is not what I want to have to do. And then suddenly life becomes very interesting, where before a lot of us are sitting in the movie theater of our brain, and our eyes are like cameras, and we're watching the movie, and we're saying this movie sucks. And I'm saying, well, there are ways to fix it. Have determined goals.

Face challenges almost with a sense of anticipation rather than reluctance. If you have a character in a movie who avoids challenges, you have no movie. Right. There's got to be conflict. There has to be conflict. And the character has to face it because that's the only way to accomplish the goal. And the only way that we actually change, it's true in movies and it's true in life, is by overcoming hard things. That's it.

You can't change by being happy. You can't change by experiencing joy. Joy is what you experience after you overcome the challenge and your character is transformed. So we love joy, but joy is the byproduct of work. And a lot of us want joy. We don't want the work. And so would you say that in order to continue to experience joy, we must experience some type of discomfort and pain? Or do we stop at one point and we're happy for the rest of our lives?

Well, discomfort and pain, there's tragic pain that we all experience. I only mean that, of course, we don't want to heap that on ourselves. Sure, sure, sure. But life is embedded with challenges. And goals are embedded with challenges. The harder something is to attain, the more we value it. And so if we don't have to work hard to attain something, we don't actually value our lives. We don't appreciate it either.

It's Viktor Frankl's man's search for meaning, logotherapy, overlaid with story principles. But what I love about it is I wrote that, I wrote that book, Blue Lake Jazz, and it hit the New York Times. It's been almost a year there. And that had been my goal for a long time. And yet when I accomplished that goal... To write the book

or hit the New York Times? Both. Both, yeah. Yeah, since high school. I'd written down one of my goals was to be a New York Times bestselling author. So it took about 12 more years

to do that after high school. And, you know, that was a real 10 years of learning to write and getting out there and hustling. And when I accomplished that goal, the next year was one of the most depressing. Isn't that funny? Yeah. And you would think, you know, if you would have sat me down in high school and said, listen, if you hit the New York Times, you're going to get depressed. But then what I realized was it wasn't that I was depressed because I hit the New York Times. It was depressed because I'd

reached my goal. My story ended and I didn't have a new one. Now what? Yeah. And so as soon as I went, I'm going to write a new story now with my life, it all picked right back up again. Yeah. That's interesting because every time, you know, my dream was always to be an All-American athlete, then professional sports, and every time I achieved it, it was like I was the most miserable person to be around. Yeah.

Like 15 minutes later, I was like, now what? Yeah. You know, in this book, Million Miles, with a team of folks, I rode my bike across America. We started in L.A. and we ended in D.C. Wow. How long did that take? About seven weeks. We took Sundays off, but it took about seven weeks.

And I knew that a week after we got to Delaware, I was going to fly back to Portland where I lived, and I knew I would get depressed because that much adrenaline and that focus every day and then waking up and have nothing to do. And so I ended up jumping into the Obama campaign when he was trying to beat Hillary in the primaries and then stayed on the campaign through the general election.

Of course, he got elected and ended up with a little job in the White House on a task force. But the only reason I did that— So you were working with Obama then? Well, I mean, I was working with an extremely—I had the most boring job ever. I sat and reviewed all sorts of stuff on fatherhood and healthy families. Then we wrote a book for the president and he did everything that we asked him to do. So it was a task force, which is a different thing. But the point is that, you know, I think some of our goals, they kind of have to be like a trapeze thing. When we

accomplish one, we need to have our hand reached out for the next one. So we need to already plan ahead. I think we need to plan ahead. We can't just say this is the end and then figure it out then. We should have like, this is this year's goal plus four years plus yeah and then inside of that as you know daily daily goals to you know small steps to reach there wow and this is research there's got to be 500 books that back up this idea but a lot of us we know it but we just we just don't live it right and how much of your work is connected to, you know, the hero's journey and the call to adventure with Joseph Campbell? I think Joseph Campbell's a genius. I mean, I think he's right on so many fronts.

There's some, the idea that myth was created to explain life, you know, I think there's validity to that. But I also think there's an imprint in the DNA of myth that came from somewhere. And so he makes me a little uncomfortable when he begins to dismiss the possibility of something that also, a true myth, a myth, you know, the existence of a god and these kinds of things. He more or less dismisses that stuff. But you can't deny his genius. And so I think the hero's journey, along with Robert McKee's work and Blake Snyder's work, and especially Christopher Booker's work, the seven basic plots, have informed my understanding of story and how I use that to help people live a better life and also how to clarify brand messages and what we do now.

Got it. So you wrote that second book, and then Scary Clothes just came out recently, correct? Yeah, it came out a year ago. About a year ago. And it's Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy. Now, why this book, and how does the storytelling play into Scary Close? Well, I used some storytelling principles to write the book, just to sort of edit it down. And so it's an easy book to read because of that.

But the story behind the book is, you know, I got married at 42 years old. So I spent 42 years single and was just not the best guy to date. Not the guy I was just to, you know, there were all sorts of issues, codependency and father related issues coming out of my background and these kinds of things. And so basically I would meet a girl, we'd date, it would get really serious, and then it was time to tie the knot. She wanted to get married, and then I'd leave. You were not ready. Yeah, I'd go to the next one.

And I think that's fine, except when you're sort of leading them to believe that's where it's going. That's what you were doing? That's what I was doing. And so I did that a few times, and one, we broke off an engagement. She proposed. I proposed. There was a ring on her finger. But you knew it wasn't the right finger.

Yeah, I knew, and I was going through the motions because I thought that's the right thing to do. I should finally tie the knot, then it just you know fell apart and she got hurt and and so i had some friends very kind friends sit me down so you know you deal with this stuff and i went off to this place called on-site workshops guy named miles adcox runs this place here in nashville actually about an hour outside of town and it was and i did seven days of therapy that uh they say is nine months of therapy in seven days and it was deep it was it was we went really really deep i mean it's stuff like they never like sit and talk like you would talk to it's like a group setting and there's actually group setting you're guiding horses around a pen you're writing letters from your

father's perspective to you on the day you were born. I mean, they just have a way of opening you up. Yeah, yeah, of course. And it was absolutely transformation. Wow. And after that, even my assistant called me before Onsite, after Onsite. It's like, well, before Onsite, Don would have done this. And didn't date for a while and then ran into a gal who was always out of my league, always liked her, and she smelled in me something that was healthy all of a sudden.

And we began to very carefully date and now we're married. And so that book is about that transformational journey, that sort of inner transformation of becoming somebody who is trustworthy with another human being's heart. And what do you think was holding you back mostly in these relationships? was when were you always putting on a front or this act or were you yeah trying to be this interesting guy well i mean that only lasts for so long right but i think there was uh you know so many identity issues what i wanted to be uh i got hooked on catching a release right like you're fishing you catch and then you release and you catch the game the game all that kind of stuff and the part of it that i liked was being

the hero and the problem is the hero is always looking for somebody to rescue who is a victim and then you rescue the victim you feel great about yourself and now you're stuck with a victim so you resent the fact that you're with a victim because they're not growing or they're not breaking through and you're like they're being a victim in order to lure a rescuer and it just none of it works and so it's it you know there's a triangle that that you know it's it's your hero victim resentment and uh so you resent the person after a certain amount you resent the person and then you begin to oppress them and then you become the oppressor of the victim wow and you you know a lot of abuse situations end up this way. Sure. And, uh, and so I didn't know that I was doing that and

to discover that at onsite and have language around it and to be able to, to kind of find my way out of that. And, and now, I mean, all my relationships were so rocky. And I remember when Betsy and I, even a year into our marriage, we were just kind of going, when is the other shoe going to drop? When is this going to get hard? Then we realized it's just not. Two healthy people actually work really well together. Who would have thought? Then we thought, well, what if our kids hate us? Because there has to be drama, right? Then we kind of went, maybe our kids are going to like us. Maybe just health works. Maybe

therapy works. Doesn't there have to be some type of conflict in every story in order to break through? Well, there's, I think there's enough conflict embedded in marriage without the unhappiness that it works out. It's a great story. Yeah. So what was it like when, I mean, how do you know you're catching a victim? Like how do we, if someone's single watching right now and they're like, man, this is a pattern I do, but how am I even aware of it? Like, what are the signs we should be looking for? Yeah.

So victims have a very high external locus of control. What's that mean? Your locus of control is that thing in you that takes responsibility for your life. They don't have responsibility. Well, they, if there's a problem, it's because of something outside of them.

They don't take the responsibility for the problem ever. So people with very high internal locus of control, they find a way to even take responsibility for things that might not have even been their fault. You know, so if you're on a football team, the guy you want on the team is, you know, the guy who kicked every field goal perfectly, but they lost the game, and he's trying to figure out how he could have done better. Right. You know, that's the guy you want on the team, not the guy who's like, oh, those guys screwed it up.

Pointing the finger. Yeah, that's no good. And so victims have a high external locus of control. Problems are other people's fault. And to some degree, the victim identity gets them what they want because they've attracted a rescuer. They don't have to take responsibility for their lives. Somebody else is going to do the work for them.

There are big benefits to being a victim. And then you can actually, here's the problem with a victim, a false victim, because there are real victims in the world, obviously. Sure, sure. But a false victim plays the victim card, and what every victim needs is an oppressor. So if you're in a relationship with somebody who self-identifies as a victim, it's a ticking time bomb on when you are going to be that oppressor. Right. Because you're going to be, because they're going to need somebody to play that role and they're going to find a way for that to be viewed.

They're going to make you wrong or they're going to blame you or whatever. Exactly. Even if you didn't do anything wrong. That's right. They're going to do that. And so. I've had a past girlfriend where it didn't matter what I said, what I did, it wasn't the right thing.

Yeah. No, that's. How good I tried to be. Well, it can't be because if it's the right thing, she gives up control. Yeah. And as long as you keep doing the wrong thing, she's you literally by the nuts exactly exactly why do we uh i think in human nature do we want to rescue people why is that it seems like our psychology right there's such a great appropriate place for rescuing people right um there's a uh you know when we think about what's

going on in somalia right now betsy and i were just on the Somalian border about a month ago looking over into, I'm not smiling, I'm sorry, Syria and Somalia too, for that matter. Right. But we were looking over the border into Syria and the atrocities that are happening there. I mean, there are legitimate victims. Henry Cloud defines a legitimate victim as somebody who has no power. They have no power. They can't. But most people are not in that situation.

Right. And, you know, it's concerning to me, even in the political landscape, that, you know, there's this sort of anti-corporation, anti-wealth, anti-all this. all this and they that is somebody a politician baiting a demographic of people to self-identify as victims and lash out against a uh an oppressor which is large corporations but you and i know large corporations provide enormous numbers of jobs they provide health insurance they provide the products they provide a security economy everything all that kind of stuff but i know that i can get a vote by tempting somebody to believe that they're a victim. What's scary about that is the whole American identity is shifting from the hero identity. I mean, we built a pretty darn good company, our ancestors have.

And now we're shifting our country and now we're shifting to this identity of a victim. And it's a sad deal. Who was the most influential person in your life growing up? A guy named David Gentiles. I didn't have a dad. David was a youth pastor at the church down the street. He took me under his wing. Even when I was in junior high school,

he invited me to a book group where we studied this series of literature, poetry. And that was my introduction to literature. And then he invited me to write an article for the youth group newsletter. I did so. And enough people stopped and said, hey, you're a pretty good writer. It's the only time I'd ever been told I was good at anything. How old were you? I was probably, I would have been 13, 13 or 14 years old. And it stuck. And I thought, man, I want to be praised more. He doesn't want to be acknowledged.

So I developed, I just kept working on writing. And somehow in there, I began to believe I was a good writer. And so it wasn't that much of a challenge to sit down and put together a book. And then that book got published and on and off. So he was the most influential guy you know and he and you know when you grow up kind of in that poverty model and dad's gone and mom's working her butt off uh there's nobody around and so you do have this feeling that you're a bit of a burden on society and so david was really the guy that when i walked into his office he was happy to see

me huh and he began to counter that idea of you're a burden to, you're actually a blessing to be around. And that was a formational change in my psyche. And plus, he was just a great guy. Blue Lake Jazz is actually dedicated to him. That's cool. In fact, he passed away in an accident. He was at a gym lifting, and the bar came down on him.

No way. Yeah, and he died. And I spoke at his funeral. Now, this guy never wrote a book. He worked at a church that maybe had 50 people in it when he died. And I delivered his eulogy, and they had to rent a baseball stadium to deliver his eulogy. There were news cameras there. He had influenced so many people.

Talk about impact. Yeah, huge impact. And the reason is he just believed everybody was worth being on the planet. There's something about you. You know, if you're here, you must be important. That was his attitude about life. Like, if you're here on the planet, you must be important. So why are you so important?

Let me get to know you. Let me figure it out. Wow. Isn't that amazing? It's a great attitude. Yeah, really. It's an intoxicating guy. He was that guy.

What was the biggest lesson that you learned from him? Well, I mean, I think that was it. That, you know, if I'm here, there must be a reason. God must be saying something to the world with me being here. Yeah. And maybe I can have an impact. I think, you know, it took a long time to kind of believe that. But I think the people who have the biggest impact in life are the people who believe they should.

You know, they're supposed to. Yeah. And I think personally, I think that's every human being on the planet. There's just a lot of people who don't understand that. Right. I believe it. What was it like growing up without a father that you know how did that make you feel or did you feel less than because your other friends had you know two parents that were there yeah i think it's kind of like having it going to the dentist and and having a toothache fixed and realizing when he fixes it that you actually had the toothache you didn't it was just a constant pain there so uh definitely i don't know that I so much thought, you know, my other friends have dads. I don't have a dad.

But there was a wealth disparity there. I was definitely on the other side of the tracks. And all my friends were. Financial wealth. Financial wealth, yeah. Gotcha. I was on the wrong side of the tracks. And my friends went off to college.

And I couldn't afford to go to college and i didn't you know couldn't afford to go to college right so i went to this little community college on a tuba scholarship and the tuba tuba yeah and uh so that was there and then uh it wasn't until i was uh 30 or so that i began working on a book called uh father fiction and wrote about growing up without a dad. And that was where I began to process some of those wounds. And that led me to actually find my father, who left when I was two years old. Oh, so he's still alive.

He's still alive. I found him. Wow, what was that like? It was the scariest moment. Oh, my God. You didn't talk to him at all until three? Never talked to him from about two years old. Now, he did visit a couple times in junior high, but I really have no memory of much of that.

I mean, it was like a lunch or something. And even then, we're just scared of him, like, who's this man? Wow. And so I called him. I found him through the district attorney. Called him and said, I'm your son, and I'd love to come see you. He was in Indiana. And drove from Chicago.

I was speaking in Chicago and drove to Indiana. Knocked on his door, walked in. We spent about two to three hours together. He's just sat there and drank a beer and watched Fox News and was more nervous than I was. Really? And was unbelievably kind, apologetic. It was an amazing moment. And he, what was interesting is I didn't, I was only doing it to sort of check it off a list. A buddy of mine had done it with his dad and discovered that his dad had passed away. And that made me start researching who my dad was. And then discovered he's alive.

And then... You didn't want to have the regret or you didn't want to have the what if if I didn't see him ever or something like that. Yeah, I mean, that was just a sense of you're going to regret this if you don't get this done. Yeah. And are you glad you did? I did. Yeah, I'm glad he actually explained why he left. He made some excuses and then he looked me in the eye and apologized. How did you feel? You know, I had forgiven him so long ago, but it made me feel really good to just say, dad, I forgive you. Wow. And that was an incredible moment. And I, I walked into that

house. I've been 32 or 34 right in there. I walked in still in some ways, a little boy and walked out a man. And here's why, because there had always been this kind of cloud over me saying, you just weren't good enough for a dad to stick around. Now, that was a lie. That's crap, right? But you just believe it. And then when I met him, I just thought, well, this is just a dude who was going through a confusing time.

He was scared. He was being kind of run off by my mom. He had the best of intentions, like a lot of people. We just make stupid decisions and they affect other people, but we weren't malicious about it. And so I walked out and just went, wait, that's not the God voice. This is just a dude who was just confused. So that heavy burden, oppressive thing went away. Wow. It was really cool.

Where do you think your life would be now if your dad was there the whole time? You know, I do think a lot. You know, would you go back in time and what would you do differently? And, Lewis, my life has been such an incredible blessing. And with Betssy and the company doing so well my writing career and uh the community of friends that we have you know betsy and i in our first year of marriage we had 200 overnight guests i heard about that and uh in this place or in this place we actually bought the house next door and now we bought 15 acres two miles away to build essentially a retreat center that we will never charge anybody money to go to because we just love hospitality.

So the problem with going back in time and changing something is what if I lost that? So I would never do it. If I could go back and have a dad there, I wouldn't do it. My life has just been too great. Yeah. Do you think you'd be as driven

if you had a dad with resources and information and love and affection? Well, you know, I don't know. I don't know. There may be. I read one study that was trying to find the difference between corporate executives who do a great job with their company and corporate executives who kind of take it to the next level. And one of the, and it wasn't Jim Collins' work.

It was even beyond that. to the next level. And one of the, and it wasn't Jim Collins work. It was even beyond that. But, um, one of the characteristics of the, the executives who do this don't have a dad, right? It's like the dad leaves or the poor. So a lot of them didn't have a dad, uh, dysfunctional families. They grew up poor and they, and they probably one have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder and two, they don take money for granted yeah you know i mean you probably like this like unless i've got eight months worth of overhead in my business account i'm hustling i'm hustling i'm like we're not gonna be able to eat tomorrow the whole staff's like what we've just made our best quarter i'm like no you know we're gonna have to buy bread yeah right exactly i think i heard that obama Obama even lost his dad early on, or his dad left at a certain age.

Yeah, he was in Kenya, and then he actually went and visited him in Kenya, if I'm not mistaken. They did interact, but then his dad passed away. I think there were some, I'm going to butcher the statistic, but something like a third or a fourth of the presidents actually lost their fathers at some point early on, or their fathers left, or early on or their fathers left or something happened with their fathers it's like a big percentage of the u.s presidents yeah and i

wonder what makes us like so driven and my father got in an accident when i was 21 he's still alive but it's essentially like um it's he has amnesia and it's hard to really connect on an emotional level it's kind of like saying the same thing every time I see him. And I remember I always had him as like my backup plan. He was always there financially, my mentor. He was like my biggest fan. And then all of a sudden it's like I had to change his diapers type of thing. Teach him how to write and talk and walk.

And just like remind him about like everything of our lives. And it was almost like, wow, I don't have my dad to just like give me a hundred bucks in my pocket when i'm in college when i need it safety net's gone he's gone and he had like a company that he was like you can come in and work for me when you're done living your dream like you've always got this to come back to yeah and it was like when that happened it just made me so focused like i have no other option like i have to learn how to become a man essentially yeah and like be motivated and driven and figure things out yeah and i think in some way I have no other option. I have to learn how to become a man, essentially, and be motivated and driven and figure things out. So in some ways, it's a blessing. It's amazing that you have, and you've done so well. I think that there's a wiring in some guys that that takes over.

But let's not kid ourselves. I mean, the fatherless crisis, most guys don't pull it out. No. And they end up in a lot of trouble. And so I think it's, you know, I mean, I think 85% of kids in prison or people in prison came, I think it's 85% of foster kids will end up doing time at some point. You know, that that idea mentorship there's no discipline it's not being modeled it's just not being modeled yeah and so um you know

it's a it's a big deal but also there's you know i'm with you some of these you know josh ship some of these guys who just and our president brock obama uh josh ship was in foster homes this whole 26 different foster homes. Yeah. And they're just crushing it. And so I think that at some point, if you can overcome that, I mean, you know, the things that we overcome are where we get our muscle. Yeah. So if somebody doesn't have to overcome anything, it's just

hard to get muscle. Yeah. You know, we have to overcome those things. But let's not kid ourselves. Some of that weight is so heavy that it crushes the guys. It's like the adversity either turns into our advantage or our biggest obstacle forever, right? We'll become the victim

for the rest of our lives until we're ready to break through. What's your biggest fear moving forward? You know, you've created so much in your life.

Yeah, I think I'm wrestling with questions and taking strides to not let this happen. But, you know, we're driven guys. Yes. And we're going to build our companies and we're going to not let this happen. But, you know, we're driven guys and we're going to build our companies and we're going to impact the world and all that kind of stuff.

And, uh, I do not want to get to the end of my life and realize I should have spent more time with Betsy. I should have had a closer group of friends. should have taken some days off I hate vacations I hate them I can't stand them I like working yeah you know and so Betsy you know my marriage is so great because she's just a regulator on that engine and uh you know we're we go to Mexico and sit on a beach and I'm just like I have no idea why I'm here I'm bored I'm you know I'm checking my phone and all this kind of stuff and uh my wife is beginning to change that and i had a great epiphany the other day we we had this trip that we had planned and uh getting together a group of people up in

british columbia and it fell through something happened that we couldn't go and uh and so betsy and i decided well we're either going to go to to Paris and visit some friends of hers in Paris or Norway because her friend had a baby. We're going to visit. Well, Betsy chose Norway. Well, the problem is Paris, you know, the couple that we're going to visit is an interior designer, architect kind of person who could help us with the land. So I wanted to go to Paris because it helped me accomplish my goals. Talk creatively. There's nothing in Norway for me to accomplish.

And I'm like going to bed just going, I can't believe I've got to do this, and I've got to go to Norway. And then I thought, well, no, isn't having a great marriage one of your goals? So isn't sacrificing and spending a week with your – she has wonderful friends in Norway. Isn't this going to help you accomplish the goal of having a great marriage? And as soon as I was able to turn it into a meaningful goal, I went, yeah. So I'm learning, like, let's make some of those goals not about growing the business or, you know, getting on the New York Times.

Let's make some of those goals actually meaningful because, bottom line, the last 15 years of your life, that's all you're going to be thinking about. You're not going to be thinking about, I wish I had another half a million dollars. You're not going to be thinking about that. It's funny. I interviewed a guy, Donnie Deutsch, who used to have a show called the big idea i think he sold his yeah i remember advertising company for about a quarter of a billion dollars and i interviewed him and he was like i'm in this like mega mansion in new york city by you know central park and the guy has anything he wants he knows everyone he's like but he was like you, you can't go to the bank every day and visit your money.

Like, you need to have something meaningful to continue to do. And, you know, relationships are a big part of that. You know, building quality relationships. But it's like, make enough money, it's, at the end of the day, what's the point? Yeah. And the guys who make so much money, like Steve Jobs, I'm sure he would give his billions away to have one more year or one more week of his life. And he probably wouldn't spend any of that working. Exactly. Connecting with people. So at the end of the day, yes, it's

important. We live in a financial economy. The economy is something we experience. And we need to master, I think, our finances, but it's also there's other areas of life as well. And use our finances to grow companies where our teams are treated extremely well and we're helping other people make their dreams come true. Of course, of course. When did you realize that storytelling was going to be a big part of your life? Well, I mean, writing a movie about yourself and working with very good editors to find out what's interesting is something everybody should do. If you get a chance, you don't pass up the opportunity. So I studied story in order to figure out how to live a better life. And then studying story to me was like discovering how to compose music, how to compel a human brain, how to captivate people's

attention, how to teach moral lessons. All that happens in story. It is the most powerful tool to compel a human brain. The average human spends 30% of their time daydreaming unless they're listening to a story. Stories hijack the brain. When you're in a movie,

they captivate you. The movie is actually doing the daydreaming for you can't really think about anything else when you're plugged into the matrix and uh and so i knew it was very powerful tool and then i actually took the elements of story and created a marketing filter a communication filter using them filtered my company's messages through that filter so So we came down with very simple, bite-sized, compelling statements about what we do, why it's important to our customer, what kind of life they could have if they engage it. And we quadrupled our revenue. And then my buddy said, man, you got to take this framework, share it with other businesses.

And so I kind of put out feelers out there saying I was willing to take some plumber through it. And Pantene called. Procter & Gamble called. And then Ford Lincoln called. And then Chick-fil-A called. And then Berkshire Hathaway called. And then the White House called. And pretty soon I realized, I think suddenly I'm a brand story consultant.

Accidentally. Everyone's calling. And then we killed every other aspect of what I was doing. And we built this company called Story Brand. We're about going on three years old now. And it's just booming. And, Lewis, I always wanted to be a writer. But helping other people, I've written seven books now.

And they're all kind of memoir-esque. You know, if I write an eighth memoir, I'm a narcissist. Clinical. It's time to stop write an eighth memoir, I'm a narcissist. Clinical. It's time to stop. Sure, sure, sure. That human desire to be seen, heard, and understood. I've had too much. You've done that.

I've had too much. Other people. So the idea of sitting down with a company. And help them tell their story. And help them tell their story is the most life-giving thing I think I've ever done. Yeah. So companies come here to Nashville Nashville or occasionally I'm able to fly out and we just sit down, we look at all their marketing collateral, we look at what they want to

accomplish and we come up with, we usually throw out about 95% of what they're saying. And we come up with very clear, simple messages. The human brain is trying to do two things. It's trying to help you survive and help you survive means get food, get water, build social relationships, a tribe that can protect you, reproduce. All that kind of stuff is the primitive part of your brain that's trying to survive. The second thing that your brain is trying to do is it's trying not to burn very many calories. Because your brain has a regulator on it. You know, thinking costs you calories.

And so your brain says, look, we're trying to survive, but if this guy burns too many calories on useless information, I'm going to shut it down. Yeah, it's exhausting. I'm going to shut it down. So what that means is when you and I can communicate in a confusing way, the person that we're talking to's brain is designed to tune you out. So the reason, as we record this, that Donald Trump just won a primary

is not because he had amazing ideas. It's because he communicated simply. He communicated on a fourth-grade level, and Jeb Bush communicated on an eighth-grade level, and Jeb Bush is out of the race. Wow. And so we actually consulted with Jeb to try to help him simplify that message about two months before South Carolina, but it was too late. He didn't listen to you. Well, no, he listened. Oh, it was too late by then.

Yeah, it was too late. Wow. too late he listened to you well no he listened he listened but it was too late it was too yeah it was too late wow and um so so what companies need are short swift sound bites repeated over and over relevant messages uh it takes a human being eight times to hear something before they actually listen so if it takes them eight times to hear it you need to say it about 250 times and if it's too confusing then they're never going to hear it. No. Or if it's too many things intertwined. Every time you communicate something about the school of greatness, you're handing somebody a bowling ball.

Yeah. And so you want to communicate the second thing. Now they've got two bowling balls. You're going to communicate the third thing. Now they've got three bowling balls. What are they going to do when you hand them a fourth bowling ball? Drop it. They're going to drop everything.

Yeah. And they're going to look at you and try to be polite and then try to get away. Exactly. Because their brain is having to burn too many calories to understand what's in it for them. Everybody's going, I'm trying to survive here. I'm trying to thrive. What do you have that's going to help me? And we have to communicate in these sound bites so that people can understand. What's a good example for maybe somebody you've worked with or just like for an entrepreneur

listening that could be helpful for them to understand? Maybe they've got a long story they're always trying to communicate and then you could break it down. Maybe it's just like for an entrepreneur listening that could be helpful for them to understand. Maybe they've got a long story they're always trying to communicate and then you could break it down. Maybe it's just like a business coach or something like that. Most businesses, we've worked with about 1,500 companies

taking them through this process now. And most businesses make the same mistake. They talk about themselves. And the reality is you're not the hero of the story. Your customer is the hero of the story. You're the guide. They're Luke Skywalker. You're Yoda. This is stuff that Nancy of the story. You're the guide. They're Luke Skywalker.

You're Yoda. This is stuff that Nancy Duarte has been teaching for a long time. She's amazing, and she teaches that from a perspective of giving speeches, but it's true in all of our communication. So that's the first thing is when I go to your website, it needs to be about the customer, not about you. So, for instance, we work with a gentleman named Kyle Schultz, and he has a website called

Schultz Photo School. And he was a firefighter, but loved to teach photography to parents so they could take good pictures of their kids. And he would say stuff on his website, like I'll teach you how F-stop works and I'll teach you all this inside language. And he bought our course and he went through it and he made, before he bought our course, he made $28,000 in a launch, which is great. You know, it's good money. And then he started saying, instead of like, I'll teach you to use f-stop, he said, I'll teach you to take those pictures where the background is blurry. He started communicating and not asking people. Fourth grade level terms.

At a fourth grade level. Not asking people to burn very many calories. Simple. I like that depth of field. At a fourth grade level. Not asking people to burn very many calories. Simple. I like that. Depth of feel. I like the blurry look. Exactly. He would never even use the phrase depth of feel until you bought the course. And then he would explain it. That blurry thing that I talked about.

Yeah, that's exactly it. So nobody's having to work very hard to understand. And he took his website, probably took 75% of the words off of his website, launched the day after he bought our course, stayed up all night of the words off of his website, launched the day after he bought our course, stayed up all night making the changes that we recommended and made $103,000 on his second launch. Wow. Michael Hyatt came through it, made a quarter million dollars on 5 Days of Your

Best Year Ever. I took him through the StoryBrand framework, he simplified his message, did 1.5 I think on the next launch. Sure. And on and on. We're just seeing dramatic results because if you have a great product and you got great people and you got great processes you should have a great business there's only one thing missing you're not positioned in the

marketplace that people can actually understand what you offer you think you are but you're not and so we have to go through those websites and we use this seven part filter to say this goes this goes this goes let's keep this uh very simple language and revenues go up it's all about the story right it's all about the story it's all about understanding the story of your customer and playing a role inside their story making them the heroes what do they want what's their external problem how's that problem making them feel? That's the internal problem. How are you positioning yourself as the guide? What's the plan to help them to destroy the Death Star, right? How are you calling them to action?

What is their life going to look like if they don't buy your product or service? What's the failure? What's the tragedy? The price they're going to pay. And then what's the happy ending to their story? What's their life going to look like if they do? Those are the seven questions that you have to answer. And if you can't answer them, your brand message is confusing.

I guarantee it, and you're losing money. You might get results still, but it may not be the maximum results you can get. We love customers with a great product that gets great results, and they're confusing their communication. The reason we love them is we know that we can fix it. Tweak a little bit. And they're going to see a hockey stick. Wow.

So story is really a big part of everything. It's all about story. Yeah, it's all about story. What's your story? What's the story of your customer and how are you playing a role in that story? Most people, they think we've got to get our story out there. You don't. You don't.

If I'm sitting down with you. We need press. We need to get our story out there. We need our story told. Yeah, we need our story told. Yeah, we need our story told. You don't need your story told. You need to talk about the thing that you have that your customer wants. It's all about understanding their story.

So if I get into an elevator with you, and let's say I need some inspiration and practical tips on increasing productivity so that I can become a great athlete or whatever. You've got something I need in that elevator. Yeah, yeah. You do. And I say, Lewis, what do you do? And you say, well, I work for a company. My grandfather started the company. You've lost me.

Right. When if you would have said, Don, a lot of people don't feel like a champion, but I can find the champion within them and bring it out of them. And I've got some tools to do that. Now I'm interested. I'm asking for your business card. But what's the difference? The difference is you didn't tell me your story.

You told me my story. What people are looking for. You identified my problem, and you painted a picture of a happy ending. Now I want your business card. What's the most powerful word someone can use when telling a story? What's the most powerful word somebody can use when telling a story? What's the most powerful word somebody can use when telling a story? I don't know. There's books that I read on story

are like 800 pages long. I was thinking of imagine. When you can kind of paint the story by saying imagine. That's a beautiful word. And stories are all about what ifs. So I used to do this experiment when I was writing. If I got stuck, I would say, well, let's come up with 25 what ifs

right now. What if the guy got pulled over and he had something in his car? What if a meteor hit the earth? What if? And usually one of those what ifs would go, okay, I'm going to write that one. But the cool thing is it works in life. You know, you're having a bad day, and what if I quit my job? What if I went camping this weekend? What if I asked that girl out? What if I sold the house? What if?

And one of those you're going to go, man, that's piqued my interest. Well, pay attention to that. Sure, sure. Because that's a story guiding you somewhere. Yeah, I like that. A few questions left for you. If you had a half a page to a page that you could write out, the story of the rest of your life, everything that you want to create or be or do or people in your life, whatever it may be, and you have to write it out, and everything you wrote down actually came true.

Oof. What would be on that page, a couple paragraphs? Well, I wouldn't want it to magically come true, because that's not a good story. I'd want to have to do the work. You're going to have to work for it. You're going to have to work really hard. Yeah. But if you could have anything and create any story that would come to life, like, what's

it like, Jungle Book? Is that like, what's the, is it Jumanji or Jungle Book? What's the one where they write that would come to life, like, what's it like, Jungle Book? Is that like, what's the, is it Jumanji or Jungle Book? What's the one where they write the book and it's like happening in real life? Oh, yeah, I think that might be Jumanji. One of those. Anyways, but if you could actually write it down, you got an old page to write down everything that happened. Yes, there's struggle and you're going to work hard, but what would you create?

Well, I've got about a 10-year run with this company, StoryBrand. We want to scale it to 25 million within a few years and 100 million by the end of 10 years. There are two paths if we can do that. If that happens, then there's a fork in the road at the end of that journey. Gotcha. And the fork in the road goes two ways let's say there's so if that happens let's say yeah and whatever you want is going to happen well you could have everything you want the fork in the road is i either you know we've got some land up here in tennessee i'm going to build a big tree house on that land and i'm going to go into that tree house and i'm going to write novels for the rest of my life my wife likes that plan i like that you know i'm going to

homeschool the kids and write novels that's what i'm going to do and ride around on a four-wheeler. That sounds good. That is really scary because I don't know if I have what it takes to be a good novelist. I know I have what it takes to be a good writer of books, but novels are different. And so that's scary. The other route would be that I run for office, and it's a completely different route. The other route would be that I run for office, and it's a completely different route. But to be able to serve, to have learned to lead and learned to run a company and learned about the economy and to be inside of D.C. a little bit to some degree,

to be able to be a statesman and help a population come back from victim identity to hero identity would be a great serving, you know, a way to serve in that season of my life. And so those decisions I'll make in 10 years, I think unless we build the company, I'm probably not qualified to lead at that level. I need to prove myself in the private sector and prove that I can build something and do all the things you have to do to do that. So at some point, 10 years from now, because I do believe

we're going to accomplish our goals. We always do. It's just work. That's it. And time. I'm going to sit there and I'm going to go, do I want to be hated

for the rest of my life for trying to serve America or do I want to go up in here and write a novel? Exactly. Do you want everyone to hate you or love you? Exactly. We'll see.

We'll see. Wow. I like it. If there was one story you could tell that you're only allowed to share one story, that's maybe not your story, but an inspiring story from a novel or some type of story that you heard in your past that really leaves a good message or has a good inspiration or sets a good principle. What's that story? I would only share this. I would choose this story knowing that other more important stories

are out there being told too. Hopefully somebody would cover the gospel and all that kind of stuff. Sure, sure, sure. There is a story that's just been so inspiring to me and so hopeful to me. I've fallen in love with the Israeli-Palestinian issue and the Israeli people and Palestinian people. I don't know why. I just love that region of the world and have been over many times. And on one trip, we met with Israeli guards or Israeli generals

and members of Knesset and also members of the PLO on the Palestinian side in the West Bank. And, you know, there's a lot of tension there. And I came away thinking, this might be a hopeless situation. I mean, you know, they just can't seem to compromise on any of this stuff, and with good reasons on both sides. And I read the story in the New York Times about some, one of the things that we kept hearing in the West Bank is,

we just wish we could go to the ocean. Because they're locked in. They're not going anywhere. Right. We just wish we could see the ocean. It's just right there. We can't get to it. Wow.

Because the walls that the Israelis have built up. And there were these Jewish women in Jerusalem. I mean, just, you know like you know our wives you know your girlfriend just jewish women who'd who'd uh who kept hearing these about these palestinian women they couldn't go to the ocean so they drove into the west bank these women and they started befriending palestinians and got to know some pal know some Palestinian women and kind of dressed them up in costumes. And because they were Jewish, they didn't get stopped at the checkpoints. And they got them out of the West Bank. And they would literally just take them to the ocean.

They'd all just go swimming for the day. They put them back in the car. They take them back home. And these women just started going in there, finding women who wanted to go swimming and take them to the ocean. And I just thought, you know, beneath our leaders who are doing a decent job keeping us all safe, there's this heart in human beings that wants to break through that conflict and compromise. And I just always have thought, you know, Don, at the core, problems really are, they can be resolved. If you find the people who are tender and willing

to take action and do something. I just love that story. I think it's the only story. If I could only tell one story, I'd probably just go around telling that one. Because it applies to so many things. I like that.

If you had an, if I was able to grant you an unlimited amount of money right now to solve one problem in the world, it was like here's a trillion dollars or however much it costs, here's the money. You only get one challenge or issue to tackle. What thing would you cure or solve in the world today? Yes. I would, in the West Bank and in Gaza, I would start schools and we're actively trying to do this. We're starting conversations to do this in the next 10 years

for young Muslim girls. And I would want those girls to be educated. I want them to go on to college. It is actually very possible for young Muslim women to get a degree in the West Bank and go to Harvard or Yale or Oxford or any of those schools. I think that if we can solve some of the problems in the Middle East, we can solve a lot of the problems in the world. And I think educating young Muslim women is a very strategic chess move in that long-term play. And so that's what I would want to focus on. That's cool. The more of them we can educate, the better the world's going to be.

That's great. Yeah. Okay. Final couple of questions. I already said that, but final couple of questions. What are you most grateful for in your life recently? already said that, but final couple of questions. What are you most grateful for in your life recently? Oh, my wife, relationships, uh, family. Uh, you know, I lost my mom last year, you know, have some friends who've lost, uh, family members. And so the older you get, you know, you hit that I'm 44, you start getting to that age where, you know, you start for the first time in your life, you realize we don't have a whole lot of time here. We've got to get moving.

For the first time in your life, you realize, we don't have a whole lot of time here. We've got to get moving. You're almost in that third quarter. Yep. Coming up. And so just those relationships, I can come home, and I like coming home. Yeah. There's not tension in my home.

It's rest. I don't take that for granted, or I try not to. Sure. I like it. This is a question I asked at the end. It's called the three truths. And I didn't prep you for this. So for whatever comes off the top of your mind, it's cool. So let's say it is many, many years from now and it's your last day.

And everything is good. You've accomplished everything you wanted to accomplish. That whole story that you just told me earlier, all that happened. But for whatever reason, the hundred books that you wrote have now been erased for whatever reason. They've all been erased. Everything you've ever created is gone. And your great, great, great grandchild comes to you with a piece of paper and a pen and says, will you write down three truths, the three things you know to be true about everything you learned in your life that you would pass on to us? If it came down to three simple lessons, what would you write down?

Well, if it's a grandchild, I'm speaking to somebody, I'm trying to give them some wisdom, right? Let's say it's for the world, though. This is your piece of, your three truths that you'd give to anyone. Yeah. I would write, you're probably not a victim. I would write, it's hard to understand sometimes, but God loves you. And then I would write, I'm stealing this from my buddy Bob Goff,

but he always talks about his eight guys. And his eight guys, the eight guys are going to carry his coffin. And I would write, know who your eight guys are. Ooh. Yeah. That's giving me the chills. That's good. I like that. I who your eight guys are. Ooh. Yeah. That's giving me the chills. That's good. I like that.

I've got four. Wow. I've got four guys. I know who four of them are. Wow. And there are plenty more who would step in, but I know who four of them are. Wow.

So I've got about 40 more years. To figure out the other four? I like that. Before I ask the final question, where should we connect with you? Where do you hang out most online? What's the main site we should go to? Yeah, storybrand.com is everything I'm doing now.

Storybrand.com. My podcast is Building a Story Brand. That's at buildingastorybrand.com. And you can listen to that. And Amazon has all my books. All your books. Do you hang out on social media at all? Yeah, Instagram at DonMillerIs.

If you really want to see the personal side of life, Instagram. Instagram, that's where you're at. If you want to know what my blog is about today, Twitter. Gotcha, gotcha. Cool. So DonMillerIs on Instagram and DonaldMiller on Twitter. Okay, cool. We'll have it all linked up here in the show notes just after this.

And before I ask the final question, Don, I want to acknowledge you for a moment. And I want to acknowledge you for your courage. You know, you went through a childhood without a father. I know what it's like to kind of lose a father, even at 22, and it's not an easy experience. And for you to create the incredible work, the body of work that you have, and impact the millions of people you have with, I'm sure, the insecurities and the challenges you faced internally growing up. I can only imagine the amount of internal pain that you were feeling a lot of the times. So I want to acknowledge you for understanding that you are an incredible gift and the incredible

gifts that you've been given to all of us. It's truly amazing and inspiring to connect with you and be able to be around your work. It's amazing. So I want to acknowledge you for the gift that you have. Thank you. That's very kind of you.

I appreciate that. Of course. The final question is, what's your definition of greatness? Ooh. You know, Lewis, you've done such a good job bringing that word back into our vocabulary and making it an inspiration. I just think, you know, I mean, you know, I just think I love what you're doing.

Thank you. And what you're guiding people through is Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy, getting them off off the couch giving them ambition and helping them step into a story yeah um there's a feeling uh that happens when you when you watch a great movie we all know it and when it's a great movie everybody in the theater sits there for an extra few minutes american sniper everybody sat there for all the way to the end of the credits and uh that feeling is i've tried to identify what that is is gratitude and it's not just gratitude for the actors and for the story it's a good story makes you feel like life can be better than you thought that you could actually do things with these ingredients that are better than you ever dreamed. That's what a good story does to you. It makes you think, we can do better than this.

Life can be more meaningful. I think my definition of greatness would be, at your funeral, people feel that way about your story. Not that they're grateful for you, but they're grateful that you showed them life could be better than they thought. It could be more beautiful. It could be more beautiful. It could be more meaningful.

You could accomplish more. Your relationships could be deeper. You could have a bigger impact. Let there be just this great chasm that is filled by gratitude when you leave. To me, that's greatness. And the sad thing is you won't hear it when people tell you. You'll be gone. But let's head there.

Let's head there. I like it. Don Miller, thank you so much, man. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode with my friend Donald Miller. Make sure to check out the full show notes, the full video interview,

all the images that we captured of Donald as well over at lewishouse.com slash 332. And make sure to connect with Donald on all of his social media. Check out his website, check out his latest books. All the links and resources will be back at lewishouse.com slash 332. If you enjoyed this, please share it with your friends. Tweet this out, post it on Facebook, email a friend and let them know. Again, the link is lewishouse.com slash 332. Let's make sure to get the word out there about this and spread the love for Donald. If you enjoyed this one, make sure to spread the love. Again, guys, we all have a story to tell. We all have a story that has yet been written.

What story do you want to tell? How do you want to be remembered? How do you want people to talk about you when you're gone? You have the choice. You have the power. You have a decision to write a new story every single day. I would love for you to write down what you want your story to be. Take a moment right now and post in the comment section below this over on the blog, on the YouTube channel, and write down one paragraph about how you want to live the rest of this year.

How you want to live the rest of this year, the big goals you have, write them down. How will your story be told? You have the power, you have the choice to write it all out and make it come true. So make sure to do that right now and start embedding your vision for the future in your own story writing today. I love you guys. I appreciate you so very much. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Outro Music