Bestselling author, speaker, and StoryBrand CEO Donald Miller breaks down the Storybrand framework, the biggest mistake marketers make, branding lessons from Jeb Bush to Donald Trump, the massive importance of a common side-character, internal vs external problems, solutions vs feelings, and the #1 thing you want to be known for.

Donald Miller is one of the masters of story and he's a

New York Times best selling author of Blue Like Jazz, Scary

Close, and Building a Story Brand. So Donald, welcome back.

It's good to be back.

So how'd this come about?

Well, most people know me as a writer, if they

know me at all, they would know that. I've written a bunch of

books, and they're most of them are memoir flavor, their self

helpy kind of books, but they're told in first person memoir

perspective, by the time you write your eighth memoir, you're

just a clinical narcissist, right? So it's time for a pivot

of some sort. And I developed this framework based on

narrative after studying stories to write screenplays and books

for 15 years, I developed a framework that I could use with

my own conference company to filter my messaging down. And,

and what that basically means is, I figured out how I could

use the elements of story, which I'm convinced of the most, is

the most powerful tool to compel him to bring to talk about my

company in such a way that people would be interested and

want to listen and engage. And, you know, the theory was that

would turn into higher revenue and higher customer engagement,

all this kind of thing, develop that framework, took my own

company through that framework, and we quadrupled in revenue.

And we saw that, oh, this framework that we use, just to

clarify our own corporate message with my conference

company is more valuable than anything we've ever come up

with. So we sort of leaked the fact that we had it. And we

didn't really put together a website or anything just sort of

leaked that we had this framework that could help a

company clarify their message. The first company was Procter

and Gamble, and then Ford, Lincoln, and then the White

House. And then and then we were off to the races, and shut down

the old conference company. And it for me, it was a wonderful

thing, because, you know, I really did feel like in my

writing career, I'd set it all. And I'm not the sort of rider

who can come up with a book every year and ride it. Life

needs to happen for me, you know, I need to, to engage them

stories. And basically, what I do when I write a book is I look

back and I go, Okay, two years ago, what were you struggling

with, that you are no longer struggling with? And if that's

interesting, I'll write a book about it. So you know, it's been

relationships, it's been faith, it's been, you know, all sorts

of other things. It's been meaning of life with one of the

books. And, and I didn't have any more of those, you know, it

wasn't that struggle with anything in a long time, I

guess. And so I thought, Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna turn this

framework into a book.

And what is it? So what is the story brand framework?

It is based on the seven plot points that

happen in almost every story. And I really mean, I mean, 99%

of stories follow a narrative arc that is exactly the same,

right. So whether we're talking about Bridget Jones diary, or

Rain Man, or Hunger Games, or Star Wars, or Romeo and Juliet,

it's the same story, basically, you just interchange some of the

characters and some of the conflict. But what most people

don't know is there is an order in which a story will unfold.

And if you disobey the rules of that order, you will lose the

audience, right. And so if you know what those story formulas

are, there are seven of them. You walk into a movie, and

within 15 minutes, you can pretty much tell what this is,

this is monster in the house, or this is quest, or this is

whatever these seven basic of story formulas. What that said

to me early on when I was thinking about this process was,

this is a language that human beings speak. And most companies

don't know how to speak this language. Here's a summary of

it. Every story is a character, a hero, that is facing a villain

that is causing them external, internal and philosophical

problems. They are in search of a guide, another character who

can help them overcome their conflict and experience a happy

ending instead of a tragic ending. That's basically sort so

that's a lot. But it what it has to do with business, though, is

these seven basic principles.

Ok so hold on, so head forward before we dive into the

principles, so So that is, like you said, the narrative arc of

every story pretty much every story not everyone, pretty much

but and that's we're gonna get to that because that's the

solution here is understanding that but but, you know, the

subtitle of the book is clarify your message. So customers will

will listen. That's right. What are some of the biggest mistakes

that you see marketers making?

There are a lot of mistakes that companies make

but here's the big one. Companies assume that customers

are going to give them an amount of time in order To understand

what they offer, and they're not, they're not, they're going

to give you zero time, they're going to spend four seconds on

your website, they're going to pass by your Billboard at 85

miles per hour, they're going to swipe up on their Instagram feed

and your ads not going to get any attention. What this means

is you have to communicate very clearly why they should stop and

pay attention. And you have to do it in a few seconds.

Therefore, if you are confusing, or elusive, you are invisible. I

don't care how much you paid for that billboard. You're

invisible. I don't care how much you pay that web designer, you

are completely invisible. So most companies, oh, we gotta get

some attention. So we have to say who we are, we have to say

it really loud. We have to tell our story, which is a trap. 95%

of creative agencies believe that. And it's why most

companies waste enormous amounts of money on marketing. Nobody

cares about your story. The way that you get somebody's

attention is that you invite them into a story.

You guys have a phrase that you say that's worth

capturing. You talk about if you confuse...

You'll lose. So I've gone around the country and

asked this question to 1000s of people. What did Jeb Bush want

to do for America? Nobody has ever answered that question. And

I probably I bet you I've answered that question to now.

150,000 people, nobody's ever answered it. When I say what did

Donald Trump want to do for America? Everybody says Make

America Great Again. I mean, they literally chanted in unison

jabs message was confusing. Donald Trump's message was

clear. Who's the better candidate? I mean, arguably, I

think a lot of people would say Jeb Bush, especially at this

point would probably have been a better president. But he lost.

The reason is people were confused. And they passed him by

so he's essentially invisible. He before he called us and we we

went and helped him a little bit at the very end. But before we

went helped him, he was a 3%. In the polls, with $117 million in

the writer eyes, super PAC and $12 million. In general campaign

fun. This is not a money problem. This is a message

problem.

Well, and it's kind of like you go regardless of what

you think of Trump, he was crystal clear.

Crystal clear. And he learned it by reality

television by telling stories by understanding what gets

somebody's attention and drama gets their attention identifying

villains gets people's attention. Now, he I also think

he's extremely manipulative in the use of narrative, he

vilifies people who aren't actually villain.

Well I don't want to get too much into the politics. But

but the but the point is, clarity counts for a tremendous

amount.

And I would even say narrative clarity, narrative

clarity, who is your customer? What is their problem? How is it

making them feel? Why is that just plain wrong? And why are

you qualified to get them out of this problem, you want to

communicate a customer centric message, the message has to be

at the customer. Let me give an example. Let's say I'm giving a

talk, let's say you were at some TED talk, you know, symposium,

and there's a bunch of talkers going up, the first guy gets up,

and he says, Hey, my name is Don. And I come from Nashville,

Tennessee, and I've lived there for about five years with my

wife, we have two dogs. Second guy gets up, doesn't say his

name, doesn't say where he's from, doesn't let you know that

he has dogs, He literally says this, we've got a big problem.

50% of the people in this room will probably die of cancer.

Who's more interesting? Well, I don't know that guy's name. I

don't know where he lives. I don't know if he have dogs. But

I am plugged in at this point, when he goes on to say your

water here is whatever. You know, when a story starts, when

a character has a problem, it opens a story loop. It makes me

want to pursue some sort of answer to this question so that

I can close that story loop in my brain. The fact that you're

from Nashville, Tennessee, and had been married five years and

have two dogs does not open a storyline in my brain, I don't

care. So I'm seconds are ticking by. And I'm waiting for you to

open a story loop and you're not doing it. So my brain is

designed, I believe, by God, that when you don't get to the

point, or you're confusing, my brain is saying, You know what,

I'm burning calories listening to this guy, and he's not going

anywhere. It's not doing anything to help me survive not

doing it. There's nothing in this talk for me. Barbarians may

come over the hill here in an hour, and I need to save some

calories in case I have to fight them. So I'm just gonna tune out

on this guy and rest my brain a second, so that I can conserve

calories in case there's a threat in the future. When you

are confusing. Your customers brain literally is programmed to

shut down and ignore you as a survival mechanism serve energy.

That's exactly it. So you have to enter and you have to invite

them into a story very quickly. And by doing that you have to

identify an ambition that they want and a problem that is

keeping them from getting what they want. And you got to talk

about it right away.

So the story brand framework give us the seven

steps, just the names of them really quick.

Well, there's a character you identify who the

character is they are the hero and you have to identify

something the hero once and we have to say that in a marketing

collateral. You know, if you want to say 15% on car

insurance, who do you go to Geico exact seat you already you

know that that's effective marketing. You know, now what

if? What if GEICO came out and had ads that said we won JD

Power and Associates award for best customer Who cares. So

there's two mistakes that brands tend to make when they're

identifying what the customer wants. They either make it so

elusive, or the other thing is a brand will offer so much that

there's 15 things that we offer that our customers want, and is

that that's great. But if you have a movie, and Jason Bourne

wants to know who he really is, and lose 30 pounds and marry the

girl, and he's thinking about adopting a cat, and he wants to

run a marathon, you will lose the audience. You have to choose

one. And it would be an umbrella thing that all the stuff you

offer comes in under. So Dave Ramsey offers financial peace,

well, how does he do it? He offers it through selling great

mortgages, he offers it through software, he offers it through

classes, but he offers financial peace is the one thing he's

known for. And we've got to do that as a brand. So first,

identify what your customer wants, then identify the

problem. They are encountering getting what they want, I'm not

going to go into this this will take a long time. But what is

challenging them from getting what they want, what is keeping

them from getting what they want. You need to position your

brand to help them overcome that challenge. But you need to name

the challenge. You need to name it and say we help you overcome

this we help you overcome gingivitis. We help you overcome

procrastination, we help you overcome weeds in your lawn, or

embarrassment in your neighborhood because your lawn

looks so bad, identify what it is and make it singular also,

because stories work best and singular plot points. Don't add

don't put a bunch of stuff here. And then you position yourself

as the guide in the story. That guy is a character that has

existed for 1000s of years since Plato and Aristotle they would

put this other character in the story that is basically kind of

a bit part but it's a very important part. The sole purpose

of the guide is to help the hero win the day. So the biggest

paradigm shift is never position yourself as the hero only

position yourself as the guide.

Coming back to famous movies. So give us who are

famous guides that we would see in movies.

Oh, in Hunger Games would be Woody from

cheers, right? Hey, Mitch. In Star Wars Luke Skywalker is the

hero Obi Wan Kenobi is the guide or Yoda is the guy there's often

multiple guides in the King's Speech. King George Of course

with Hero, Lionel, the drama coach is the guide and

Moneyball, Billy Beane, is the hero, Peter brand is the guide,

Mr. Miyagi is the guide for karate kid, you know, on and on.

And the guide sometimes can be the central character of the

story. Mary Poppins is the guide in the movie, Mary Poppins, the

father is the hero, and the Father is hardly on screen.

Every one of us wakes up in the morning self identifying as the

lead protagonist in the story as the hero, when you come to me

and we meet at a cocktail party, say what do you do? I work, I

helped start this company. And we're actually you know, we have

a great company culture. And we have a great, great places to

work metric. And we're trying to double revenue next year, what

as you talk about your company and yourself, what my brain is

doing is it's categorizing you in my mind, and it's

categorizing you as another hero. Yeah, it's not that I

don't like you actually quite interested. You know, I'm like,

I wish this guy would keep in touch. He's got this great story

going on. I wonder, you know if that's going to work out. For

now, though, I do wish he would step aside because I'm actually

looking for a guide to help me solve a problem. And you're not

talking about my problem. And you're not positioning yourself

as an authority to solve my problem. You're telling me your

story.

So if you're talking about yourself, you can't, it's like

you're not talking. You can't be talking about yourself and

talking about my problem at same time.

You can, as long as you're talking about yourself

in the context of solving problems. So when you say,

instead of saying, you know, I work for this company that

helped start putting years ago, you would say something like,

you know, I'd say, what do you do for a living? You say, Well,

you know, no sale, most salespeople actually don't have

accountability. And they really struggled to make the calls and

close the deals, because we're all kind of lazy on the inside.

I have a coaching firm that actually keeps salespeople

accountable. And we find that when employers hire coaches, for

their salespeople, their revenue goes through the roof. It's

called, and then you go from there. Well, what did you just

do? You just identified a problem that I may have, you

talked about the solution, and you invited me to live that

story myself to solve my own problem. That is good, effective

marketing and branding. So there's the guide, that's the

guide them what the guide does the guide, the there's a couple

things in the book, there was a way that you position yourself

as a guide in your customers subconscious, there's two things

you need to do. One of the other things that you need to do is

you need to give the guide a plan, I mean, the hero a plan,

the guide gives the hero, usually three or four steps that

they can take, in order to solve the problem. The reason you do

that, is because most customers won't engage you if they get

into a confusion. But but let's say we're at the cocktail party,

you say, you know, you should call me my coaches can really

help. I'm probably not going to call and probably like 40%,

ready to call you. Because there's kind of a fog there. I

don't know how much it's gonna cost. Is it gonna be you know,

it's gonna take a bunch of my time. And if I have questions,

I'm not going to make the deal. And here's why. Because it's a

risk on my parts of financial risk. It's also a social risk. I

may I may be foolish by by buying into a bad service. So

there's, there's an at the point where I start feeling that risk.

Those are all excuses to walk away. And your customers are

willing to take those excuses. So what you have to say to me

is, Don, it's really easy. So so what you would say is, if I say

yeah, I'm kind of injured So you can have a card, you'd have your

card and said, Yeah, absolutely. It's actually super easy. You

and I just get on the phone, we have a call, I assess your

needs, we send you a custom strategy report saying what we

think you should do, and then we help you execute it. It's just a

three step plan, it's super easy. Well, what did you just do

in my brain, you just said, Don, it's not gonna be a lot of hard,

there's not gonna be hard work in this is gonna be super easy.

We find that when you actually say to folks, hey, this is let

me show you visually 123 steps, and they go, Oh, this is easy.

You see a dramatic increase in customer engagement.

So you start with a character, there's something

they want, that has a problem.

They meet the guide. And the guide gives them

a plan to solve their problem. Number five is the plans right?

Yeah, actually is number four, four is the plan. And then

number five, is you call them to action. Yes. So you make your

direct calls to action, by now schedule an appointment register

today, extremely clear. And it's amazing how many clients come to

us. And we look at every website of every client that we engage,

and they come to our workshops, we put their website on a giant

ad and screen scary. Like, we don't embarrass you, but we do

say, hey, you know, you need to do this, you need to do that you

need to this, one of the things we often say is your calls to

action are very clear. You're saying things like learn more,

or contact, that's very evasive language, you need to say call

now, by now, it needs to be extremely clear. And just

clarifying your direct call to action. And in the top right

corner of your website, you should have just a couple

buttons. Most people have 10 or 12, that's clutter, the only

thing I want you to do is apply or buy now or schedule an

appointment. So what I'm going to put that in the top right

corner, and I'm going to make it a different color, painfully

obvious, painfully explicitly clear, if you go to our website,

you'll see a bunch of buttons, I think contact is down at the

very bottom in what we call the junk drawer. People will look

for the contact button, you don't need it at the top. What I

want at the top is where you marry me trying to marry the

girl here. Right? So you don't want to like, will you marry me?

And also, would you like to meet my brother? And also would you

you know, let's just stick with the one question that we're

trying to get to here. And so you know, it's just being more

direct. And also, customers need to be challenged to place an

order. And most of us are selling passively, which makes

us look weak. We think we're saying this, we think we're

saying, oh, you know, I don't want to bother you. But you

know, we do have a great service, if you need it, give me

a call. But I really don't want to I don't want to be one of

those pushy salespeople who's bothering you. We think we're

being polite, what the customer is actually hearing is, I don't

actually believe in my product, I don't believe it will actually

solve your problem. If you do want to give me some charity and

buy it, I would appreciate that. But I'm not very confident that

I have what can you imagine going to a doctor and a doctor

says you have cancer. And they say we do. I mean, we have a

pill that for a lot of other people it's just made may just

go away very quickly. It's actually you know, but I don't

want I don't want to bother you, you know, it's like you're gonna

tie that guy down and force that bill down his throat and make

him pay for it. Because he's gonna dive. So if you don't have

a problem to solve, no wonder you're being passive. But if

you're if you do have a problem to solve, you're going to be

direct. And then the final two, after calls to action are you

have to tell people, what are the negative consequences of not

doing business with you you had, if there are no stakes in the

story, there is no story. If the bomb isn't a threat to go off

and hurt a bunch of people, it's no reason to keep paying

attention to this, the bombs a dud, it's not gonna hurt

anybody, I'm not gonna watch 90 more minutes of this guy trying

to get to this bomb that we all know is not ever really going to

go off, you do need to say there are some consequences not doing

business with us, here's what life looks like, you're gonna

keep procrastinating, you're gonna make less money, you're

gonna have tooth pain, but you know, whatever it is, then the

final is the success bucket. And that is we got to give people a

vision of what their life can look like if they do business

with us. So we got to tell them what the life will look like if

they don't and positively what their life looks like, if they

do that create stakes in the story. So those are the seven, a

character that wants something has a problem they have to

overcome meets a guide who helps them give them a plan to show

them how easy it is cause them to action. So they do not

experience tragedy, and instead experience success. And and my

opinion, and I believe my opinion is right. You should

only communicate answers to those seven questions, anything

on your website that doesn't come from them why those seven

buckets is noise, and it's keep confusing your customers and

it's been proven to captivate a human brain. So if we use it for

helping people give speeches all the time. And you know, first

thing you do is walk to the platform, and you talk about

what we all want, but we can't have it, because there's a

problem. But don't worry, because I've helped a lot of

people get through this problem. And I've done it by 123 I need

you to engage and do this thing in order to solve this problem

for yourself. Because if you don't bad things gonna happen.

But don't think about that. Because good things can happen

that your life can look like this. That's it, just those

seven, everything else is known.

So what is the difference between number seven and number

one?

What what the character wants is there they're

actually very similar and they can overlap. Okay? But let's

say, you know, I'm embarrassed about my yard and I don't want

my I don't want to be embarrassed in the neighborhood

anymore. That's something I want But what's the solution to that

a beautiful lawn. So the success is the beautiful lawn, what I

want is to not be embarrassed anymore. They can overlap. And

they can even in those two categories, in fact, it's

beneficial if they are the same thing. Because the more you can

use the exact same language, the more clear your story actually

is. Gotcha. But those two are very, very similar. Well, if you

think about it, the success category closes the loop on what

the customer wants. So it's actually even better if they get

what they want in the end.

And you use the term villain, there's something you

want, but there's a villain.

It's the villain who causes an external, internal

and philosophical problem, external problem is usually the

physical problem that the company solves internal is how

your customer is feeling about their external problem. I'm

feeling hopeless. And I realize my problem, embarrassment is how

I feel about it. Now, here's why that's important. People are

more motivated to solve internal problems than they are to solve

external problems, because nobody's calling you because

they have a problem. Nobody, they're all calling you. Because

that problem is making them feel something and they're trying to

end the feeling. They're not trying to solve the problem.

They're trying to gain the feeling and the only way they're

gonna be feeling so I'll probably, you know, I'm, are you

embarrassed about your lawn? And do you wish it looked as good as

your neighbors? My problem is, I'm embarrassed.

Where do you want people to go to either connect with you

guys get the book, etc, etc?

They can buy the book anywhere you buy books,

Barnes and noble.com amazon.com, anywhere. All that sort of

information about us is available at story brand.com.

What is the first step? I mean, other than buying the

book, if you're going to just go?

Absolutely. Even before you start the business?

If you're at that stage, or if you've been in business for 10

years, the one question you need to answer is what problem do you

solve? People are only motivated to solve problems. And if you

can say, I solved this problem. When somebody hands you their

business card, you actually, you know, put it in that Rolodex

file of your brain, right? You're trying to remember this

person in their business, the Rolodex in a customer's brain,

isn't they alphabetically categorized by the name of your

business? It's alphabetically categorized by the problem you

solve. So when you say, you know, here, I do business, you

know, I do I do this and we work. We work with wood a lot. I

don't know what problem you solve. So big on my brain. I'm

trying to figure out where to categorize you. And I'm not

gonna, I'm not gonna be enter W for wood. I'll forget you. So if

I can't figure out what problem you solve, actually, I literally

throw the thing away in my brain, it's never in my brain

again. But when you say, we work with wood, we make wood floors

that don't buckle for 100 years, because they're the most solid

wood floors in the world. They'll never work will not net

firstly, you just agitated a problem, right? I didn't know

wood floors, buckled and warped. And so now who do I go to to

solve this problem that I didn't even know existed? I go to you

because your floors apparently don't buckle or work. So just

associating this. Here's a problem that everybody's dealing

with. And we have solved that problem is the number one thing

you want to do in business because you got to be known for

solving a problem.

Don, thank you for all that you guys do.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.