Messaging gets way easier when you stop trying to sound smart and start trying to sound clear, and this quick Guru Conference convo nails why. Alongside Jay Schwedelson, Donald Miller breaks down the “cognitive load” trap that quietly kills conversions, then hands you a dead-simple framework for turning what you sell into something people instantly get. The best part is its practicality: you will leave knowing what to say, how to say it, and why repeating one line beats explaining ten features.

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Go to StoryBrand to learn the four ways Donald helps teams build their five soundbites, including the on-demand course, a live workshop in Nashville, a private on-site workshop, or a Donald Miller strategy session.

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Best Moments:

(03:30) The “Kids love aquariums” example that doubled sales with three words

(05:34) The five soundbites that invite customers into a story without rambling

(06:00) Why your customer is the hero and you are the guide with the rope

(08:45) If you claim you solve 10 problems, you are basically solving none

(15:15) How repetition trains AI to associate your brand with one specific “hole”

(26:13) The simple email flow that consistently beats “clever” copy

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Jay Schwedelson: Alright, this is a special episode of Do This, not that. This is a conversation I had with Donald Miller during Guru Conference that just happened and he taught me so much in just a few minutes about how to really clarify your message. He's the founder of StoryBrand. He's a huge deal and I just wanted to take that discussion and release as an episode 'cause I got so much out of it.

Jay Schwedelson: I hope you do too. Check it out.

Jay Schwedelson: we have one of the industry giants here. This is gonna be an incredible discussion. So who do we got? We got Donald.

Jay Schwedelson: Miller. Now, I would imagine 99% of you know who Donald Miller, Donald Miller is, but if you don't, he is the founder and CEO of StoryBrand, and he's not only the bestselling author of like a zillion books, but do you realize that his books collectively have spent over a year. On the New York Times bestseller list, that is like, think about that for a second.

Jay Schwedelson: And his company, StoryBrand and Coach Builder, they help businesses and leaders really clarify their messaging by using this amazing structure, right? And over one. Million business leaders have discovered Donald Miller. Donald Miller's powerful StoryBrand, this whole framework. He's a genuine, amazing guy, a mantra in the marketing world.

Jay Schwedelson: I'm so excited to have him here. Donald, welcome to the stage. Thanks so much for having me, Jay. Good to be with you guys. This is awesome. All right, so for everyone here, uh, that's in the chat, that's listening, that's watching all the things. If they for some reason don't know about what StoryBrand is and the enormous impact that it has, can you just break it down?

Jay Schwedelson: What is it that you do?

Donald Miller: Well, years ago I started noticing that the reason people bought things was not because of brand colors or logos or style guides or any of that. In fact, probably every person watching me right now has bought something from amazon.com in the last week, maybe even the last hour, and that is an ugly website.

Donald Miller: It's just an ugly website. It's not an impressive logo, none of that. But it's text heavy, lots of text. And I realize that when I buy something it's because I read some words that make me wanna buy something. Well, as a writer, and I've written about 15 to 20 books, I'm, I don't know, but I've, I've written a lot of books.

Donald Miller: I'm obsessed with words and how words make things happen in people's minds. And I began to, about 10 years ago, apply that to. Companies and to businesses and to product copy and taglines and all that kind of stuff. And what we noticed really quickly was the more that we released the cognitive load of words, the more people bought.

Donald Miller: And what I mean by that is if you make people think they're not gonna buy from you. And so I created a framework called the StoryBrand Framework that reduces the cognitive load. That people will encounter in order to buy something. And we saw massive increases in sales. For example, company came to me recently, they, they dominate the aquarium market.

Donald Miller: In pet stores like PetSmart, Petco, they sell all the aquariums, they sell the charcoal, they sell the fish filter, they sell the everything but the fish. And um, they came to me and said, look, we have hobbyists buying our equipment. We don't have families, but people who walk into Pet, pet Spart Petco.

Donald Miller: They're families and we, we gotta break into the family market. Can you help us? And I said, yeah, we spent a day together, but at the end of the day, I said, yeah, three words. Kids love aquariums. Kids love aquariums, put kids love aquariums on the aquariums, on the fish food, on everything that you sell. Kids love aquariums.

Donald Miller: Put it on the signage. And they were like, are you being serious right now? You think three words are really gonna break us into a new market? I said, yes, they will. They test marketed that in a test market. They put kids love aquariums everywhere. 99% increase in sales.

Jay Schwedelson: Oh,

Donald Miller: and if you think about it, what it that that's a hundred million dollars market.

Donald Miller: So you're talking about 100 million to 199 million with no additional capital expenditure. Just words what that, what actually happened there was they decreased the cognitive load. When somebody, when a dad walks in with their kids and they're thinking about getting a bunny or a puppy or a cat, but they know thing's gonna poop all over the house, they don't want to do it.

Donald Miller: They see the words. Kids love aquariums. You didn't make them think. They, the more you make somebody think, the less they are going to buy from you. The problem that everybody watching me, especially if you're any sort of thought leader or any sort of leader at all, you wanna sound smart and sophisticated, which is the exact opposite.

Donald Miller: What you need to do to decrease cognitive load. You need to sound as simple as possible, and you need to sound so simple that nobody has to think to figure it out. It turns out that's a very hard thing to do, and so StoryBrand is a framework. That you filter your message through and it reduces the cognitive load, it increases sales.

Jay Schwedelson: You know, when I first heard of StoryBrand, which is a while back now, I said, oh, this is gonna make me write a lot more stuff. I have to use a lot more words. I have to create this story. Uh. This narrative, all this stuff, and I'm like, I can't even get a sentence out properly, let alone craft a whole story.

Jay Schwedelson: And then you start to layer in and this idea of you having a hero in the story, uh, but then as I started to consume everything, what you're saying is really the opposite almost of yes, it's a story, but you're really saying, uh, when you talk about cognitive load, are you talking about shrinking this down to the fewest words possible?

Donald Miller: Yes. I'm literally talking about inviting customers into a story using five soundbites. That's it. And there are specific soundbites. There's the problem, soundbite, empathy, answer, change, and end result. Those five soundbites will effectively invite customers into a story. By the way, you don't want to tell your story.

Donald Miller: Everybody listen to me. Don't tell your story. Invite customers into a story. They are the hero of the story. You are the guide helping the hero win. So look, let me explain. Yeah. Every story is the same. It is a character walking along at peace and stability. That character falls into a hole. Their peace is destabilized.

Donald Miller: A guide comes along, says, I'm so sorry you're in that hole. Throws them a rope. The hero climbs out of the hole, and they are re stabilized to a sense of peace. Only they've been transformed and they're a better version of themselves. That is every movie you have ever seen. Now, sometimes it's a group protagonist, sometimes it's a single protagonist.

Donald Miller: Sometimes there are multiple guides throwing multiple ropes, but it doesn't matter. That's the story. So as this relates to you building a business, it's your customer is at peace. They fallen into a hole. So the very first thing you wanna do is a problem soundbite. So you own the hole. You want to own a problem in your customer's mind.

Donald Miller: Your product is the rope being thrown into the hole. They climb outta the hole, and you give them a transformation. They are a better version of themselves having climbed out of the hole. You do that with five soundbites. Problem is the hole you're in. Empathy is me positioning myself as a guide. Answer is the rope being thrown in the hole.

Donald Miller: Change is the transformation you experience after coming outta the hole, and end result is the happy ever after scene that you get to experience. It's just five soundbites. Now the beautiful thing is you take those five soundbites and you populate all of your marketing. Your landing pages, your websites, your social media, your lead generators, your YouTube scripts, all of it need to come back to those five soundbites being repeated over and over and over again a million times until you own that hole.

Donald Miller: And anybody who falls in that hole calls you and gives you money.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright. This is amazing and I'm, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but does this apply to business, to business, nonprofit, consumers, small business, big business? Does this apply to every size, every industry?

Donald Miller: This applies to business, to business, business to consumer, e-commerce.

Donald Miller: Uh, it it applies to anybody who uses words. To try to convince somebody else to do something.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright, so let me layer something in here. 'cause a lot of people that are here today be like, this is amazing. I love this reframe, but my company is, you know, a B2B, a plumbing supply company, or my company's a SaaS platform and our platform does 10 different things and I feel like we're solving all these different problems.

Jay Schwedelson: How do you boil it down? So you're able to articulate it and cut that cognitive load. When companies think, uh, senior leadership thinks they're doing so much and they can't just boil it down to this one thing.

Donald Miller: You've got to, A story cannot be about 10 different things. If Jason Bourne wants to know who he is and lose 30 pounds and marry the girl and adopt a cat, we have lost the plot.

Donald Miller: You have dramatically increased the cognitive load of the movie going audience. And they won't like the movie. They just won't know why they don't like it. It's 'cause you're making them think. You know. A great example is the Aura ring. This is not an ora ring. This is just my wedding ring. But an aura ring is a Fitbit for your finger.

Donald Miller: It measures your steps, it measures your heart rate. It, it, uh, calculates your HRV. It helps you figure out how to optimize your sleep. I wore one for a year or so and really loved it. Uh, what they figured out was if they stopped talking about that 10 things that the oral ring does, and they only pick one thing, which they chose sleep, and they call it a sleep lab on your finger.

Donald Miller: Then people buy the OR ring to get better sleep and to monitor their sleep and they discover after they buy it, all of these other things that it does. What they discovered when they narrowed down and owned one problem rather than trying to own 10 problem is their sales dramatically increased. So you've got to solve one problem in the audience, and then later explain everything else Why?

Donald Miller: Because the, the, the smaller the cognitive load at the point of introduction, the more likely people will buy from you and discover more later if you lead with all 10 things. You might as well lead with nothing. So yes, it's very important that a soundbite helps you reduce the cognitive load, uh, right off the bat.

Donald Miller: And then, then after you're in a relationship with them, you have earned right, earned the right to explain more. But I would say the number one problem most cus most people deal with is they, uh, try to explain all the benefit and value upfront. And all they're doing is making people think.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay, I wanna go off script for a second.

Jay Schwedelson: 'cause now I'm just curious for my own business, quite frankly. Yeah, I love this idea. It's almost like, I don't wanna say it's like a Trojan horse in, but it's like you lead with this one thing. It's, that's a great way to say it. Okay. So it's like Apple leads with the phone. Now you all the other stuff I spend with Apple or whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: So now I got them in. They, they, they bought the first product, whatever, but they do have these 10 other things to sell them, and now they're a little more invested in my company. At that point, am I still going one by one saying, okay, here's the next problem I wanna solve for 'em. I'm doing like a one this one next service, or am I saying, by the way, here's the 10 other things.

Jay Schwedelson: Now you pick what you find most interesting.

Donald Miller: Yeah, I, I would say let's get 'em to the other side of the paywall first. Yeah. And then let's blow 'em away with the additional value that they're getting. Uh, let's not blow them away with the additional value to get them to buy. That's the mistake. Yeah. And it's an, it's a counterintuitive mistake.

Donald Miller: You would think, well, let's explain the 25 things they get. No, explain the one thing because they're not giving us any sort of time to explain the rest. Let me, let me tell you how, lemme tell you the ramifications of this. I, I'm not a Republican or a Democrat. American politics are very di divisive. Jeb Bush wrote a book on immigration.

Donald Miller: Donald Trump had a soundbite. The soundbite beat the book. Yeah. Build a wall, beat a comprehensive plan on immigration. Is that right? No, that's not right. Is that good? No, that's not good. Is that a fact? That's a fact. So you have to understand nobody is sitting down pouring a glass of scotch, giving you three hours to wonder whether they should buy your product.

Donald Miller: They are responding to a soundbite, and if you don't have that soundbite down, they will go to the competition who is inferior to you, who delivers less value for more money, and they will buy from them instead of from you because they understand the offer.

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, I That's so powerful and, and it bleeds into this discussion about ai.

Jay Schwedelson: Let's pivot to AI for a second. 'cause when I think about StoryBrand, okay, my website's gonna say this, and my content's gonna say this, and all these wonderful things are gonna happen. But now I go on chat, G-P-T-I-I-I, I, I need help with whatever, and it's giving me. The answer or the companies, uh, are with their content right there.

Jay Schwedelson: And I don't leave Chacha Petit or Claude or Perplexed or any of, I don't leave, I stay on the, the AI tool. So now how do you make somebody the hero? And how do you do all the story stuff and, and all of that within this AI world.

Donald Miller: Yeah. So the way you do that is you come up with the soundbites first problem, empathy, answer, change, end results, spells out peace.

Donald Miller: 'cause you're returning your hero customer to peace. So you figure those out and, and I'll give you an example. I worked with a company called YA, you need a budget. It's a $50 million budgeting application that you get in the app store, a digital product. And we came up with the, they were coming to me saying.

Donald Miller: It's really not about budgeting, it's about spending. Uh, we don't like the word budget. Budget feels restrictive. Uh, we don't wanna use that. We don't wanna, you know, all these nuanced, sophisticated messaging ideas that were gonna cost way too many cognitive co cognitive calories. So they, their cognitive load was ridiculously high.

Donald Miller: So what we did was we said, okay, problem. Have you ever worried about money? That's it. That's the soundbite. Have you ever worried about money? They now own the worried about money whole. Now, how many people have ever worried about money? What percentage of the population? Of human beings? A hundred

Jay Schwedelson: percent.

Donald Miller: 100%. So they now own 100%. If you ever worry about money, what you're trying to do is trigger anybody who worries about money buys my product. Anybody who looks out a window and sees it's dirty buys my window washing solution. Anybody who's having an argument in their marriage buys my therapy. You need to own a specific problem, and it cannot be vague.

Donald Miller: It cannot be vague. It's gotta be very, very specific. Meaning, if I were a dog trainer, I wouldn't sell dog training. What I would sell is, does your dog bark when somebody knocks at the door? That's it. Now you own that hole. Now how many people own that hole? I mean, everybody has a dog. They own that hole.

Donald Miller: They're the only one,

Jay Schwedelson: right?

Donald Miller: They can scale that to $10 million in certifications of dog trainings if they want to, 'cause they own a hole. Now, when you own that hole, here's how you own that hole. You come up with a soundbite, and then you disseminate that soundbite relentlessly. Every time you're on camera, you say it, you put on the back of your business part card, you put it on your, your lead generators, you put it on your website.

Donald Miller: That is where AI starts picking up on the fact that you own that hole. You go and you, you, you hire a really cheap company to release a press release. You never get any videos. But we know that AI looks for press releases. Yes, you, you know, you see what I'm saying? Now you're training AI to think of you when it thinks of that hole.

Donald Miller: If you have, if you own 10 holes, it's gonna think of you 10 times less. If you use different language, it's gonna think of you 50 times less 'cause you said it in 50 different ways. So you're, you're training AI with repetition of the exact same soundbite. And then of course, you do the same with empathy, answer, change, and end result, and now you own the story of that person getting out of that hole.

Jay Schwedelson: I, I think that's so valuable and I want everyone to really understand what that all means. Like even my own business, we've been putting out certain, uh, facts or statements over and over and over and over again. Now I gotta chate and I ask things. It's coming back to me like a boomerang. I'm seeing it answer.

Jay Schwedelson: With the information that we've just been putting out there. So I, I'm curious about something. Let's say you work in a business with a hundred people, 5,000 people, big, bigger businesses, whatever. Is it important to get that tagline that that thing out, that everybody is marching and using it and saying it and putting out their social posts, everything.

Jay Schwedelson: 'cause it helps to get the LLMs, the, the large language models to then grab it. Is that, is that the way to think about it?

Donald Miller: It is critical that you get your entire team answering the question the right way. So if I ask, if you have a hundred employees and I pull them all into an office, one by one, and I say, what do you do?

Donald Miller: I want them all to say the same thing. If I say, what problem do you solve? I want them all to say the same thing. If you say, how do you transform a customer? I want them all to say the same thing. If you say, Hey, what's the climactic scene? The happy ever after your customer gets to experience that they buy your product, they all need to say the same thing.

Donald Miller: So that in itself is converting your entire team from the janitor to the CEO into a sales force. And the only way to do that is you repeat the same thing over and over. Until they begin to repeat it back to you. So every good messaging campaign is an exercise in memorization. What it actually takes is coming up with the right soundbites and then ridiculous discipline and repeating those soundbites.

Donald Miller: The CEO should repeat those five soundbites in every meeting and every keynote presentation in every video in text, on the retail wall, in every commercial. You know it, it's about repeating the soundbites, and the more you repeat the soundbites, the more you convert first your team and second your customers.

Donald Miller: Now your customers say, why do you buy it from Geico? Well, they could save me 15% on car insurance. How did they, how did they get the public to know that $240 million in advertising spend every year in which they repeat the same soundbite and did they grow? They grow exponentially. By the way, that was a Warren Buffet move.

Donald Miller: He bought the company. Came up with the soundbites, went from about 11 million in advertising to 240 million in advertising in order to get the public to memorize and repeat the offer. And he makes billions because he did it. And you can do the same thing with a small company.

Jay Schwedelson: Would you say that that's a, a fail that you see, okay, somebody reaches out to StoryBrand, like, you wanna spend the day with Donald Miller and they have a decent sized company and you do all this work and then they're not proliferating it internally just lives within the marketing, uh, unit, if you will.

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, does that, is that a recipe for failure? Do you see that a lot? Yes. Imagine you might.

Donald Miller: New nuance is a recipe for failure. Nuance, complexity, sophistication is a recipe for failure. If you try to sound sophisticated, you're gonna fail. It needs to be simple. You know, I was talking to a real estate agent recently.

Donald Miller: He said, Don, how would I differentiate myself? I said, well, when you're at a cocktail party and somebody says, what do you do? What do you say? And they said, well, I tell 'em I'm a real estate agent. And I said, okay, that's terrible. But tell me what else do you say after that? You know, what's your, what's your differentiator?

Donald Miller: Well, I can help 'em find my dream home. I said, okay, well now we're getting somewhere. If I ask you what you do, here's what I want you to say and get the statistics right. I'm gonna make up statistics, but they're probably true. Or somewhere in the neighborhood I would say, somebody says, Dom, what do you do?

Donald Miller: I would say, well, 87% of people live their entire life. And they never get to live in their dream home. I make sure they get to live in their dream home. I'm a real estate agent. Cool. He's gonna own a crisis that 87% of people never get to live in their dream home. Now, he's not a real estate agent. He's a man on a mission, and that mission is making sure that you as the hero, experience a climactic scene where you are living in your dream home.

Donald Miller: That's called inviting a customer into a story. In which I play the guide and they are the hero and they no longer have to live in a hole. And he did it with a soundbite. So that's what we're looking for for everybody watching this video. What is your soundbite at which you own the hole and you get the hero outta the hole?

Jay Schwedelson: Dude, this is great. This whole getting out of the hole thing. This is, this is amazing. So, alright, I wanna. I wanna talk a little bit more about AI for a second here, because I got an incredible writer here, a New York Times bestselling author, and what is Donald Miller's take on going to AI and having it help you write stuff?

Jay Schwedelson: Are we anti, do you never use it for that? Where are you at on this?

Donald Miller: I love ai. I absolutely, I adore ai. However, AI is a freshman in college, uh, who thinks a little too linear. And I need to know what I'm looking for, to know whether it's right. So if I say, uh, I'm a real estate agent, how should I introduce myself?

Donald Miller: It is not going to give me the right answer. But if I say, I'm a real estate agent and I wanna introduce myself, but I wanna start with the problem because it's such a great hook and I want to own that problem, give me 10 different examples of problems I could own. As a real estate agent, it's gonna give you 10 examples.

Donald Miller: You're gonna choose one, and then you're gonna go in and you're gonna say, Hey, I really like this one. Can you boil this down to a soundbite? You know what? That soundbite is too nuanced. You got cute and clever with me. I need to decrease the cognitive load on my customer understanding that's, you know, you see what I'm doing?

Donald Miller: Yeah. I'm coaching ai, but I'm coaching it with a framework in mind, with an end result in mind. Then you as a human being, have to have the ability to say, that's it. That's the one. I know that's the one, and I'm gonna use that one, but if you just go and ask it for an answer, it's gonna give you the wrong answer.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, I, well, I'm glad you said that because I think people that are trying to not use AI at all, I mean, they're, I don't know who they are anymore, but they're, that is ridiculous. I'm curious about something now, AI's giving you these ideas. Maybe they're framing it all, and just along the same lines of coming up with that, making the person the hero.

Jay Schwedelson: Do you a b test that line, like kids love aquariums or is it, you know, kids enjoy fish? Like, do you come up with like five versions, you put 'em out there and you're looking for certain metrics to come back and then you roll with one? Or are you landing on one out of the gate? You're like, this is it.

Donald Miller: Uh, you wanna test everything.

Donald Miller: Kids love aquariums didn't need to be tested. I knew that was gonna, I knew that was gonna make them tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. And of course it will, because you don't have to think about it. I mean, like kids love aquariums means parents who have kids are gonna, they want something.

Donald Miller: Their kids, you don't have to think about this right now. What I'll often do is I'll take, um, I'll take four or five. Taglines, or I've even done this with my entire book in Rough draft copy, and I've said, pretend you're a book club with five different members, a left-leaning feminist liberal, a right-leaning conservative male, a uh, school teacher, a fan of Donald Miller, and somebody who's never heard of me, they've just read this book.

Donald Miller: Give me their sound bites and tell me specifically what they won't like about this book. And they'll say, well, the feminist doesn't like this. And I'll say, okay, feminist is important to me. How can I mitigate the damage to soften this for the feminist perspective or the, the male conservative or the the guy who's never heard of Donald Miller, show me lines that I can put in this book that would mitigate.

Donald Miller: The cognitive load for them, and it'll give me those lines and then I drop it back in and I say, okay, gimme the same thing now that those lines are in, and it'll gimme better and better results. You wanna do the same thing with taglines, with landing page copy with lead generators, you know, and, and, and I, and what it's gonna do is it's gonna say, especially if you give it the instruction of reduce the cognitive load, it's gonna come back and go, here's the clear winner and here's why.

Donald Miller: Now you take that and you test it in the market because. AI isn't human, so we've gotta now go test it with human beings to see where AI was off. But I think it's a fantastic focus group. You can create focus groups inside of ai. You can give it 10 different personalities inside of one focus group. And that's cool.

Donald Miller: And it's, it's just a fantastic tool. If you're not using it, you ought to,

Jay Schwedelson: I mean, I need to reduce cognitive blow to my life. I'm gonna recommend to my friends when they text me and my wife because I, I'm a very simple minded human being. I mean, I need to make this easy. Well,

Donald Miller: you know, I do that too, and I, I say, look, unless I'm helping you clarify your message and come up with your five sound bites, the answer's no.

Donald Miller: You know, so if like, you want me to come speak at at something and I don't get to do that, the answer's no. So. People just stop asking me, unless it's about creating five soundbites, they're gonna help you make money.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, before I ask you a bunch of email questions, I would imagine sitting next to you in the movie theater when their previews are playing, forget about the movie.

Jay Schwedelson: They always play like 20 previews now and sitting next to you, I can imagine you being like, Nope, that movie's terrible. They don't have a hero, or they're not falling in a hole. Or like, is, is is going to a movie next to Donald Miller, a bizarre experience.

Donald Miller: Well, it, it can be, I mean, my wife hates it when I elbow her and say, that guy's gonna die in 31 minutes because it's a, uh, you know, a conquer.

Donald Miller: The monster script and the conquer, the monster script on page 17 has this in it, and this is not gonna be any different. Um, however, I will say this, Jay movies are so incredibly powerful and stories are so incredibly powerful to compel a human brain. They suck me in just like they suck you in and I stop studying them and I just enjoy them.

Donald Miller: So, okay, good. There's no other tool on the planet that will cause a person to stop daydreaming. People daydream 30% of the time when they're walking around, there's no other tool on the planet that will stop you from daydreaming. That's more powerful than a story.

Jay Schwedelson: Wow. That is awesome. Alright, let's get into email for a second here, because, uh, everybody here is trying to make you write the best subject line and now they open up the headline, all the things, and it was like, great.

Jay Schwedelson: How do I get this all across? Like, does your whole StoryBrand formula, framework and all this idea of making the person the hero all, does that start like in the subject line and then what happens after they open it? Like how does it all work with email?

Donald Miller: Well, there's some formulas and best practices that work really well.

Donald Miller: Your subject line, you know, again, it's, it's almost like taking chords on a guitar, which is a science. It's an actual science. This is the C flat chord. This is the B chord. This is the G chord. That's a science asking me where I put the G chord in. A song is not science. That's art. And so once you learn the science, you can play with the art.

Donald Miller: So. Should the subject always be a B flat? No, it depends. Show me the subject. Is it working? I will say as best practice, if you say struggling with x question mark, it's gonna be a great subject line. Are you worried about finances right now? It's gonna be a great subject line. Uh, now we could do something like five ways.

Donald Miller: Taylor Swift is brilliant. At managing her finances and it's gonna do well, even though it's not a problem because it's about Taylor Swift. So there's all sorts of little nuances that you can get into. But once you understand how to invite a customer into a story using five sound bites, you now have five chords that you can write songs with.

Donald Miller: When before you didn't have any chords, you just had gut instinct. You don't want to trust gut instinct. You want a science behind what you're creating. But yes, if you open an email with the problem, then you empathize with the problem. I care about you. I don't want you to struggle with this. Then you position your product as the solution to that problem.

Donald Miller: Then you say, here's how you're gonna transform after you use my product and be a better version of yourself. And then you say, here's the happily ever after end result that your life is gonna be, that that email will outperform anything you've ever written. Almost assuredly.

Jay Schwedelson: And do you feel like, and I, I only get two in the weeds on emails and all, but here we are in email conference.

Jay Schwedelson: Is that in general, whether you're a business or a consumer brand, whatever, is that able to be articulated better in a, like a letter format email with just a few lines? Or do you think you can get the same, uh, thing across, accomplish the same goals with a nice, pretty thing with all the images?

Donald Miller: I, I, you know, that's another art question, like how do you create art out of these chords?

Donald Miller: But, uh, I, I would say. If you go to an ad agency and pay them a hundred grand to write you a really great email, and you come to me and I use my five soundbites, I'm probably gonna beat 'em. I'm not saying I'm gonna beat 'em, I'm probably going to beat them. Yeah. Uh, if you have a gorgeous, gorgeous, beautifully designed email and I have all texts, I'm probably gonna beat 'em.

Donald Miller: And the reason is they're gonna increase your cognitive load. I'm gonna decrease the cognitive load. The only exception would be like fashion. Where you're selling an aspirational identity and you got a really good looking underwear model and I'm trying to write copy about why you should buy my underwear 'cause it's more comfortable.

Donald Miller: Yeah. I'm probably gonna get beat by the guy with the shirt off, to be honest with you. But other than that, my copy's gonna beat your images. All right. Skims a picture's worth how many, how many words is, how many picture? A picture is worth a thousand words at least, you know. But I would actually say not true.

Donald Miller: I can write a sentence that will beat your image.

Jay Schwedelson: I love it. Uh, skims. Okay. Maybe not. We'll leave that over for Kim Kardashian to send out the pictures. But everybody else, I think Donald Miller is gonna win. Alright, Donald, for everybody that wants to get involved with your world, we're gonna put it right now.

Jay Schwedelson: It's in the chat. It's already pinned there. storybrand.com. What's gonna happen when they go to storybrand.com?

Donald Miller: Alright. storybrand.com I'm gonna help you write five soundbites that become your tagline, your lead generator stimulation. You it's gonna, it's gonna dominate your entire messaging campaign.

Donald Miller: Those five soundbites you need to disseminate as a messaging campaign to get the public to memorize them. They are very strategically and specifically written. There are four ways that I help you do that. There's an on-demand course that goes live about two weeks after people watch this. So in about two weeks that goes live, there's a live workshop in Nashville that we limit to only a hundred people.

Donald Miller: We have a giant wait list, but I can really only help a hundred people at a time, and we have coaches in there. So it's designed to be intimate. There is a private workshop where you hire our facilitator to come to your building, and then if you wanna spend a full day with me, it's one day, but it's two Zoom calls on the beforehand, two Zoom calls after, and it's an eight week where you basically have my phone number and that's called a Donald Miller strategy session.

Donald Miller: Same, same deliverable. Five, five soundbites, four different ways to, to buy that. And it's at storybrand.com to learn about all of them.

Jay Schwedelson: Listen, everybody that's out there, I will tell you I have learned more from Donald Miller than anybody else that I could rattle off. Uh, the guy is just, he puts out so much information.

Jay Schwedelson: You gotta go to StoryBrand, you gotta check out. It's incredible. Donald, thank you so much for being a leader in the space and uh, thanks for, uh, being here at Guru Conference.

Donald Miller: Jay, one of the most fun conversations I've had in a while. Thanks for having me on. All right, we'll see you soon.