Ever feel like your marketing messages are getting ignored? That’s because they probably are. Your audience’s brains are wired to tune out anything that’s too complex, vague, or…let’s be honest…boring. In this episode, I sit down with Donald Miller to discuss why people buy, how to simplify your m
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
Are Affiliates Just Lazy? How to Motivate and Get the Most from Your Affiliates
Why People Really Subscribe & Buy (It’s Not What You Think)
Why I Finally Started My Own Affiliate Network
Scaling Your Affiliate Program and Your Business Without Spending a Fortune
How to Expand Your Affiliate Army by Recruiting Non-Traditional Affiliates
Marketing That Actually Works: Donald Miller on Storytelling, Sound Bites, and Selling More
You ever feel like your marketing messages are just getting completely ignored? That’s because they probably are. Your audience’s brains are wired to tune out anything that’s too complex or vague or, let’s be honest, just boring. So in this episode, I sit down with Donald Miller to discuss why people buy how to simplify your messaging and why. Conflict. Yes. That means drama, tension, controversy. These are the keys to grabbing attention. So if you want to sell more with less effort and help your affiliates to do that, this episode is a must. Listen. Let’s get started.
All right. I am super excited about this episode. It has been a long time since I did an interview. In fact, I get approached probably 110 times, 120 times a year about doing interviews. I say no to all of them, but this one is one that I had to say yes to. This was a unique opportunity to interview someone that I’ve been a fan of for a long time that I got to know years ago, as he was one of the top affiliates for Michael Hyatt and Ray Edwards. And I got to know him and his team and really just, you know, just fell in love with what they were doing.
I believe in what Donald Miller is teaching because I have been a student of his, and I have put into practice what he’s teaching, and it has worked for me. So the reason I wanted to have him on is this is not only about selling.It’s not only about your marketing. It’s about how you communicate with your affiliates and how you promote affiliate offers. And this guy knows his stuff better than anyone.So we had a really interesting conversation. But ultimately, this is a marketing masterclass. And so without further ado, I want to dive right into my discussion with Donald Miller about building a story brand 2.0 Well, Donald, welcome. Thanks so much for being here today.
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Donald Miller :My pleasure, Matt.
Matt :So for some people listening, they hear this name, Donald Miller, the picture they still have is, you know, the guy who wrote Blue like jazz, A million miles in a. In a thousand years. And just for those who don’t know, I think the shortest way, if I were to describe them, like, three words or less, I would say, you know, spiritual memoirs. So, yeah, it’s interesting. Like, let’s have a guy on who does spiritual memoirs. But that’s not why we’re talking today. And, you know, today you’re considered one of the leading marketing experts out there. Someone who’s impacted, I mean, literally hundreds of thousands, probably of small and large businesses. And I’d love to just start where that transition took place. Especially for those maybe who don’t know about this, I guess you could say chapter two of. Yeah, Donald Miller’s Professional Career.
Donald Miller :That’s a great way of saying a chapter two or a second act. I wrote memoirs, spiritual memoirs from a Christian perspective. Although I was banned by Christian bookstores, so they weren’t exactly. Exactly run a mill Christian book. Maybe too free thinking for some people. You know, they did really well, but I wrote about seven of those and just didn’t have anything to say for the eighth. I loved that career. I loved doing it. But, you know, when something does well, the publisher wants more and I didn’t have any more. In order to write these memoirs, I’d studied story and story structure and Joseph Campbell and Blake Snyder and Christopher Booker and, you know, so on. And I figured out a framework on how to tell better stories and then decided to write a book about how to use that framework to kind of clarify a corporate marketing message. So complete shift for me. However, what people didn’t realize is that I used to run a publishing company.
You know, being an author, I had a conference company and so I was dabbling in sort of marketing my own stuff, created this framework and put it out there, tested it with a bunch of different workshops and, you know, a lot of Donald Miller fans trying to figure out what he’s doing in business. Just sharpened it and then wrote a book called Building a Story Brand that sold another million copies. And so now I basically won the lottery twice.
All of a sudden I had a career as a guy helping other people clarify their message. And I think Procter and Gamble was the first client. Ford Lincoln called us. The White House had us in. You know, it was just off to the races immediately. And I am so very, very grateful because I actually really love it. I’ve loved both of my careers. I love the career. I wrote memoirs and sat around my underwear and pulled lint down my belly button and described the Lent. Basically, it’s what that life is like.And now I’m in rooms with real people trying to do real things and I’m trying to help them. People, basically, they’re very close to an idea or a product or a message and they don’t know how to say it to get other people interested or to get them to pay attention. I discovered through a series of accidents, I’M really good at that. And so it’s really fun to just work with leaders trying to do something and help them figure out a word, their objectives.
Matt :I mean, one of the surprising things that I found when I first studied Storybrain, I want to say, back in, like, 2016, you know, we have a couple of mutual friends. Michael Hyatt, Mark, Tim, and who introduced me to it. I remember I sitting in a. A table in Coeur d’alene, Idaho, and Mark is. He’s mentioning it to me, and I kind of was like, different Donald Miller. And then he’s like, no, the blue, like, jazz guy. I’m like, oh, wait, what? You know, But I kind of brushed it. I mean, just being honest.
Donald Miller : I mean, this is. No, I. I don’t. Totally. I don’t blame you for that at all. I mean, here’s the guy who writes memoirs, and now he’s talking about corporate messaging.
Mat : Yeah. You know, it’s. It’s. It’s almost. It’s like finding out that your local candy maker became a health food addict, and you just like, I’m not gonna listen to dietary adv from a guy who sells chocolate bars. Right.
Donald Miller :So I’m gonna go the opposite direction. The local health food guy starts making candy. I’m interested.
Matt :Yeah. So I kind of brushed it off. And then I’m sitting it with, you know, Michael High and his team at BlackBerry Farm. And, I mean, they’re raving about it like it’s completely transformed their marketing. And so I’m like, okay, again, what can the blue light jazz guy? Because, I mean, let’s be honest, that’s who you were to me, you know?
Donald Miller :Yeah Yeah,
Matt : We know about building a business. And so I started listening to them. And so I remember that weekend with Michael’s team. We were sitting there. You probably been to BlackBerry with him at some point.
Donald Miller :Yeah.
Matt :You know, like, you’re going to. You can see the. Exactly where we’re sitting, you know, in that back room of the. The one up on top of the hill. You know, the restaurant on top of the hill. Not the. Not the bar, the other one. And we’re sitting there in that back room, and I mean, I’m just, like, peppering them with questions. I don’t even know if I knew it was called Story Brand at the time. I was like, don Story thing, you know?
Donald Miller : Yeah, yeah.
MAtt :Those questions, they didn’t describe it as well as you do, so I’d love for you to describe it. But they were talking about survival and, like, conserving Calories. Yeah. And we’re getting like health and fitness, right? Yeah. Like some guy named Science Mike. And then they’re telling all these stories about your stories. I’m like, okay, this is fascinating. And my brain is just exploding. So let’s talk there. Like the survival aspect of marketing, the conserving calories, things I know you know what I’m talking about and. Yeah. And what the heck Science Mike has to do with all that.
Donald Miller :Well, you’re referring to what I put in the book about how the brain works and basically why people ignore you. That’s basically it. And human beings are wired to survive. It’s the dominant job of the human brain. That’s the main objective that God gave you. And by the way, that’s a protectionistic method. I mean, it’s a filter. The brain is basically just trying to keep you alive and keep you on the planet.
And you know, that means you, you’re looking both ways when you cross the street. You’re trying to figure out where your next meal is going to come from. You in a first world economy gets a little more sophisticated, building friendships, tribes, storing away resources, you know, things like that, that we all do here in America. But the point is always the same.
The brain is trying to survive because of that. It’s constantly scanning the environment for information that will help you get ahead, save money, meet people who would be valuable for you, procreate, you know, on and on. It’s all about survival of yourself and the species. What that means though, is that if I can’t associate your product or service with my survival, the brain is actually designed to ignore you. I’m always looking for some way to survive. And so if you can’t tell me really quickly how you’re going to make me more money, help me save money, help me get a better night’s sleep, help me lower my cholesterol, help me build better relationships, help me be more attractive, help me gain status.
There’s a billion ways, by the way, that we can survive. And by the way, I would actually argue that every product that sells well is somehow associated with survival, every single one of them. And so we’ve got to figure out how to communicate really quickly using words, how our product helps people survive. The second thing the brain is always trying to do is conserve calories. You burn about 4 to 600 calories a day with your brain. It is the organ in your body that burns the most calories. It’s a very expensive computer at the top of your head. If you burn 6 to 800 calories a day processing information, but you’re being thrown 3 to 5,000 commercial messages a day. Your brain simply has to ignore almost all of them in order to function. Because if you actually processed every piece of information that you got, it would. Your life would be unsustainable. You’d be sitting there, you wouldn’t even get out of bed.
Matt :Would be skinnier though, perhaps. I mean, yeah, is that the weight loss brain?
Donald Miller :Your brain might be, but my guess is you’d need some pretzels to fill up that calorie reserve and it might backfire on.
Matt :You take that and you look at it and you go, okay, well, if you’re making people think
Donald Miller : About how you can help them survive, you’re going to be ignored. So what this breaks down to is short, simple sound bites. You need short, simple, memorable, and repeatable sound bites that you can use over and over in the same wording to get people to understand how you can help them survive. That’s why Make America Great Again beat. I don’t know, whatever Biden was pushing. I don’t. I don’t. Or Kamala Harris was, was saying, sound bites will win the day. And it doesn’t even matter if you have an inferior product.
Sound bites are going to win the day because people can understand very quickly how you can help them survive. So that’s what Science Mike brought to my attention. And Science Mike is a friend named, named Mike McArg, who’s a scientist, and I talk about him in the first chapter of the book and how the Brain Works, where most of us then are failing as business owners, as leaders. As you know, whatever we’re doing is we are speaking in very complicated language. We’re being elusive, we’re being vague, and we’re not using repeatable sound bites. Because of that, people almost have to try our brand or try our product or hear about it from a friend in order for it to grow.
But if you actually filtered your message down to a few sound bites and repeated those sound bites, it would be much easier for people to understand why they should want to know more or why they should try it, or why they should trust you with their 10 bucks. So the Story Brand framework is a framework that helps you filter down your message into seven simple sound bites, seven very specific sound bites that you can use on your website, your landing pages and your emails, your YouTube scripts, the opening and closing of your podcast.
You can use them in casual conversation. But you need to memorize these sound bites. You need to come up with them first, then you need to memorize them, then you need to repeat them over and over. And what happens is nearly magical. We see brands, you know, not very long ago, a brand that was making about a 100 million came up with a sound bite, and they went to 200 million with a sound bite.
Matt :And the reason is nobody knew why they should buy their product before, but after the sound bite, everybody knew.
Donald Miller :And, you know, it’s just that simple. So I think the reason the framework works is because of the way the human brain works. And, and the human brain is designed to engage simple, easy to understand messages that do not cause me to burn calories in terms of thinking and to engage products that I can associate very quickly with my survival. And that’s the challenge that I lay forth in the book. And then I teach you how to do it.
Matt :There’s actually something that you touched on that. One of the very few questions I planned was I, I’m going to give you a heads up later.
Matt :I want to challenge you to kind of apply this to some different industries.
Donald Miller :I would love that.
Matt :I think it’s like stump the story brand guy. You know, there you go. But you mentioned, you know, make America great again and the slogan of that. And now I flash him back. I remember when Mark first told me about this, it was in October or September of 2016 and then it was only, you know, a few months later post election, I was with Michael’s team and I remember both times that sound bite theme came up in the context of story brand and we all kind of looked at each other and like that, you know, somebody eventually would say like, you know, what was Hillary’s slogan? And we’re all like, I don’t know, you know. And it was very interesting the way, so when you go to the polls,
Donald Miller :when you go to the polls, you remember Trump’s offer, but you have forgotten Hillary. So who’s gonna win?
Matt :Yeah, Exactly.
Donald Miller :I said the same thing I said when Trump ran the first time. I went on about four months before the election, said Trump was gonna win this. And then I did it again when he ran against Biden. I said, Trump’s going to win this. I didn’t call it the year that Trump ran against Biden and lost because I didn’t want to bet against the guy because he’s such a surprising guy. By the way, I’m not a fan of Republicans or Democrats. I, I, I think both parties are not in a good place for America.
Matt :And we can agree on that.
Donald Miller :Yeah, they’re just not, they’re not being very helpful because the self, they are so self interested and they’re so distracted by political theater that they literally just can’t get anything done. You know, people get very passionate about politics. I tend to get very cynical about politics. So that’s my fault. But you know,
Matt :I study messaging.
Donald Miller :I study messaging for a living. So I couldn’t call the second one because it just seemed like Keep America Great Again was not resonating, it was memorable. It was easy to understand. But I’m like, America’s not great. Arguably in the worst place we’ve ever been in a Long time, certainly in my lifetime, because of COVID and all sorts of things that were thrown at the administration.
Matt :Yeah.
Donald Miller :And I just can’t call this one, because I don’t even think this sound bite’s going to work. I don’t think people believe it. And of course, it was a very narrow loss when he came back against Biden the second time. It was make America great again, make America healthy again, make America wealthy again, make America safe again. And that is probably the best messaging campaign I’ve ever seen in any presidential election. Any. Anyone, ever.
Matt :And that’s not to say, look,
Donald Miller :He’s been prosecuted in federal court. He’s arguably responsible for January 6th. He has trouble telling the truth. You know what I mean? This guy is unelectable. That is the power of effective sound bites. Now, this is not a knock on Donald Trump. There are things that he is doing to disrupt our government that nobody else would be crazy enough to do. And there are things that need to be done. And so I like that. But he, to me, is a very, you know, question marks, like, you don’t know what you’re getting. All that said he wanted, arguably a landslide. And I think it’s because of the sound bites. And Kamala Harris, by the way, did not have effective sound bites.
Matt : Nobody knows what it is. And that’s true. Like, it’s not just.
Donald Miller :Can I tell you why I think her objective, like many, many politicians, is to get elected. That’s it. So you say, well, what’s your plan for America? My plan is to get me elected. That sounds like a plan for you. What’s your plan for the country? Well, it’s to say whatever the polls tell me to say to get elected. And I. I think that, you know, you kind of smell it, that’s on them. And by the way, there’s been plenty of Republicans who’ve run that play. Regardless, you’ve got to have a plan. That plan needs to be associated with people’s survival, and you need to articulate it with sound bites.
Matt :Yeah. And if you think about it, it was actually 1980 with Ronald Reagan, was. It was, let’s make America great again. You know, if you were alive back then, I mean, I was one, so I don’t remember it from that. But studying history and it was like, are you better off than you were four years ago? So if you look at.
Donald Miller :Yeah, think about it, he’s selling hope. He’s actually asking you have your survival percentage chances gone down. And then make America great again is a climactic scene, picture of what your life could actually look like. Morning in America means there’s a new day and there’s hope. I remember we’re coming off the Iran hostage crisis with Jimmy Carter. The economy wasn’t doing well. You know, those are factors that I think make sound bites even more effective. But listen to me, if you don’t have the sound bite, you’re going down.
Matt :Yeah, read my lips. The new taxes. I mean, these are. It’s the economy, stupid. Like, we all remember the. What’s the bridge to the. I don’t remember Clinton’s second one, but it was, you know, building a bridge to the 21st century, I think. You know .
Donald Miller :Right.
Matt :With Obama, you had. Yes. Keep up alive. And. Yeah, yeah. I mean. And so.
Donald Miller :And yes, we can.
Matt :You look at those. They’re all, like, in that three to seven word range. You remember them. What was Bob Doles? Nobody knows.
Donald Miller :I don’t know. I just remember him selling V***** after the election, and I thought he was an incredibly good V***** pitch man. And, you know, a lot of those guys become themselves after they lose. You’re like, where were you during the campaign? That’s what everybody said about Romney.
Matt :Yeah. What was Romney’s campaign?
Donald Miller :We missed an opportunity. America missed an opportunity there. And I end up. But listen, Mitt Romney’s the kind of guy who’s going to look extremely carefully at the polls, and he’s going to say whatever you want him to say, and he’s going to say it in a confusing, elusive way. And that’s just. He just should have said, here’s my plan. That’s my plan. And I. I think we missed an opportunity there with Mitt Romney. I really do.
Matt :I think he would have been watching the documentary. They did the documentary on him. And I’m like, who is he and what did he do with the guy that ran for president? Isn’t it amazing? Like, what is it? Like him or not? That’s not the point. It’s just if he had been himself,
Donald Miller :I have friends who’ve sat down with him. You know, I talked to Governor Haslam here in town. He sat down with Mitt Romney. He goes, can I tell you one thing you wouldn’t believe about Mitt Romney? I said what? He goes, he’s funny. Because now he’s really funny.He’s like, really witty and smart. And, you know, you put a camera on him, it becomes stiff and elusive.
matt :Yeah.
Donald Miller :I mean, board stiff.
Matt :So. So back to the book I mean, obviously, again, presidential campaigns are, I mean, it’s a business, you know, you’re selling a vision for billions and billions of dollars, trillions, you know, of what you’re controlling, you know. But this book here, you know, this is the newer version and even says on there over a million copies sold. So why write a new version? Like, what’s changed since 2000?
Donald Miller :I’ve been asked to write new versions of a lot of my books, and I’ve, I’ve declined every opportunity, pretty much building a story. Brand 1.0, if you want to call it that, was. I had definitely sort of tested the book for two years of the concepts before I wrote about. I did I don’t know how many sort of small groups and one day workshops and spoke all over the country about it.
So I knew the concept worked. In the seven years since that book has come out, we’ve seen brands double, triple their monthly revenue, quadruple. And so there were a lot more stories that I had. So I thought, boy, it’d be great to include some of those stories. Then the other thing, yeah. With building a story brand 1.0 and building a storybrand 2. 0 artificial intelligence had come out.
Matt :Yeah.
Donald Miller :And so we put together StoryBrand AI. You know, usually I would charge a lot of money to sit in a conference room with you and your team and we would wireframe your website, we’d come up with your new tagline, we’d write some really important, maybe lead generators. I would charge a lot of money. Now everything that I did in a room in eight hours can be done. And I’m not exaggerating that in about five minutes with
StoryBrand AI and I would say the copy is just as good or better. And so I knew this changes everything. And so we built Storybrand AI and we incorporated it into the book. So those seven sound bites that I was talking about earlier, Storybrand AI can create that for you in about 60 seconds. And it also write a tagline for you, all free. By the way, at storybrand AI, there’s a paid version and a free version. But those seven sound bites in the tagline, those are free. I’ve seen what happens. You start using those words, it works well. Right now, this morning I worked for a couple hours. It’s going to take me a long time, maybe a few more weeks. But where storybound AI is going to have a website review tool for free also. So it will actually go to your website, read it and tell you one of about 27 things that you’re doing wrong.
Matt :Cool.
Donald Miller :And yeah, and it’s really fun to write it because AI is the best sort of thought partner I’ve ever encountered. It understands everything, it works fast, it’s not moody, you know, it doesn’t drink coffee. It’s really fascinating. So in the world of AI, you know, storybound AI will write your social media posts, it’ll write lead generators for you, it’ll even tell you what domain names you should go buy in order to kind of capture mental real estate in the market. It’s a very powerful tool. So I incorporated that. There’s about 10,000 words. I actually rewrote it from first word. You know, a lot of rewrites will have, like sections that they put in.
Matt :Yeah,
Donald Miller :I rewrote it from beginning to end.
Matt :I noticed that it’s
Donald Miller :The fastest way for me to do it.
Matt :Yeah,Well, because I had listened literally before I got this version. I went back and listened to the old version. Didn’t read it, you know, but just wanted to get a re. Listen to get some of the principles. And so as I’m reading it, I’m like, that’s different. And I was like. And I remember thinking, like, did he literally. Because that seems like talk about burning calories, you know, that’s. Well, it was real. I’m obsessed. Of interest. Why’d you do that, out of curiosity?
Donald Miller : Because I have an OCD problem. I have a problem because I have something wrong with my brain. Because it already existed and it had sold a million. Sold like 1.2 million copies.
Matt :Yeah, exactly.
Donald Miller : In the world would you change it? But I just thought this could be so much better. And I had a lot of fun doing it. We also created this thing, Matt, that you’ll love as a creative person. I thought, well, well, are people going to read the book? And what if they want their teams to read the book? And there’s no way. If you have a team of a thousand people, they’re all going to read the book or listen to the book. So we actually wrote a screenplay with a screenwriter, with an actual award winning screenwriter. And we wrote a story about two guys, Pete and Joe, who inherit their mother’s board game company in the digital age. Neither of them are good business people.
They’re one’s a jock and one’s a poet. They like, should not be running a business. And they use the Story Brand framework to save the company. And we’ve turned it into a radio drama, hired about 10 actors and actually recorded it with like a music composer. And it’s about an hour long and it tells a story and it teaches you the framework as you listen to the story. And it’s available on Audible, probably for free if you have credits. But it’s called Story Brand Radio Theater presents Pete and Joe save their mother’s company. And so,
Matt :yeah, it was just. For me, it was like
Donald Miller :I just wanted to do something really fun. And so I rewrote the book and created the radio drama and put it all out there.
Matt :All right, well, I just got it. So, guys, it’s two hours and 26 minutes, no matter how much.
Donald Miller :Yeah, 60 Minutes is the radio drama. And then there’s another 60 Minutes plus of me and Dr. J. J. peterson because he did a dissertation on story. There’s a bonus interview at the end where we actually go through the framework outside of the or.
Matt :JJ on, like, five years ago, four years ago, Marketing Made simple came out.
Donald Miller :Yeah. So yeah,
Matt :That was. That was fun. Yeah. I mean, guys, it’s like just over two hours. Anybody can. I have a low attention span. I can make it through that. So go. Go give that a listen. If you’re like, I don’t want to read the book. And.
Donald Miller :Well, if you listen to the radio drama at one and a half, it’s 40 minutes.
Matt :Yeah.
Donald Miller :You get through it pretty quick.
Matt :So I know we have the AI tool, and I want to talk about AI in a second, since you brought it up. And you can’t do a podcast on marketing today and not talk about AI or it doesn’t count. Like, you know.
Donald Miller :Yeah, right.
Matt :Nobody will listen. True. So I have to figure out a way to put AI in the title. Of course. But the books is the principles, though. And to me, knowing the principles, like, yeah, you can just have AI write it, and
Donald Miller : You can have AI write it, but if you know the principles, you can start doing it yourself in casual by that little tweak. Yeah.
Matt :If you know how to apply your unique voice to the storybrain framework, that’s where it comes in. Because sometimes there. There are words like I just don’t use, you know, and StoryBrand A is not gonna know that. You know, like, Matt doesn’t use the word amazing. He likes awesome. You still have to know the principles and know the framework to be able to follow it, and I think make those human tweaks. So what I’m saying is don’t just go to StoryBrain AI and then use it, not read the book.
Donald Miller :That’s. Well, the other thing is, if you get a brand script, you’re not gonna understand why there’s an internal, external, and philosophical problem. Yeah, you understand why. What’s this villain part about? Just listen to the audiobook. Super easy.
Matt :Yeah. So you know what? Let’s talk about villains. All right, so let’s do. Yeah, this is the game I want to play here. So let’s name all good stories have a villain. And I’m going to quote you here. I want to quote directly from the book. The more dastardly the villains, the more urgent their need for our product. And so the book takes you to, like, what makes a good villain, But I’m assuming a lot of people are like, I was like eight or nine years ago again when Michael and them were talking about this and they’re talking about villains. I’m like, how does that apply to my industry? So the game here that I’m hoping people will when they hear this, we’re gonna, you know, the quick game, right? I’m just gonna name some industries you name a potential villain. You know, two of those things that I’m going to name may or may not help me, but the other ones don’t. I’m hoping that it helps people see there always is a villain, even in the most obscure industries.
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Donald Miller : And be like, by the way, isn’t always a person. It should be personified. But it, you know, boredom could be a villain. I just talked to a Joe’s not the villain. That’s right. I just talked to a gym owner. Ms. Gyms is a gym for kids. And it’s like, you know, a tumbling gym, things like that. And they said, you know, we, we really differentiate ourselves from other gyms because other gyms teach specific sports, but we teach all around sort of fitness and activity. And I said, that’s not a villain. The villain isn’t the other gym. Because no parent is waking up in the morning going, I can’t. I gotta keep my kids away from specific sports. So that’s a differentiator for you and your mind. But not. I said, you know what your villain is? Screenshot. It’s screens. Kids are addicted to screens. I have a three and a half year old, she asks me 50 times a day, can she watch television. I need somebody to kill that villain for me. And you have a kid’s activity gym that will do it. He just immediately went, oh my gosh, I cannot believe we didn’t see that.
So I think you need to put out a little piece, one piece of paper on watch screenshots. And on that same piece of paper. But by the way, at Emmett Kids Activity Gym, nobody’s looking at a screen. And you have just positioned yourself as the hero who defeated their villains. The customer’s villain, not your villain, the customers.
By the way, when he chose a villain, he chose his villain As a person trying to stay alive in business, we don’t care what your villain is. What is your customer’s villain? And the customer’s villain, he just screens screens and inactivity. Well in the cut because the customer’s parents and the customer is the parents and they’re fighting screens and it ain’t and the listening. Is that the truth? As a, as a loving father of a three and a half year old, It’s a villain. That’s a legitimate, real villain. And so let me just ask the listeners, do you think his gym is going to increase engagement 100%? There’s zero question he could double. But with that one move,
Matt :That’s a problem. People are currently looking for solutions. I mean, how many searches does that get a day?
Donald Miller :Yeah. And by the way, if it’s not a villain, as soon as you read that little card, it becomes one. You know the 10 reasons screens cause inactivity and unhealth in kids? Not just physical, but probably more mental. Because what they’re not seeing, what they’re not experiencing. So that’s a fantastic example of a villain that drives people to your business.
Matt :Yeah, I never saw screens as a. I mean, perfect example of, like you said, it wasn’t on my mind, but it became a villain as a result. Was reading one of Meg Meeker’s books, you know, probably eight, nine years ago, and she talked about the effects of social media on teenage girls. And I just went, oh, I didn’t know that social media was like, I didn’t know. So suddenly it was like, okay, now I need a solution.
You know, she’s four, so we don’t have to worry about it just yet, but I need a preemptive solution. You know, I immediately started researching products, and of course, they changed by the time it became relevant. But, you know, I was ready for that. Like, it became. She turned it into an. A villain, you know, in. In a positive way. It was. So that’s a great example. They don’t necessarily always have to be a.
A villain to start with, that the customer’s thinking about. So here, here, Just a few of these. I asked for some industries, and I tried to pick the ones that were a little bit. Maybe more the challenging ones. Like, there are a couple just too easy. Okay. So investing is one. Like, what would be the villain if you had a company that sold investment advice?
Donald Miller :Yeah. Confusion, lack of clarity. You’ve done this about your future. That’s it. That’s what you’re up against. Okay. And so, you know, I would ask a question, like, last time you talked to your financial advisor, did you walk away clear? You should if you didn’t come see us. Right.
You know, you have to be careful because there’s SEC compliance in that specific industry. So you can’t say the villain is lesser returns or the inability to retire because financial advisor wouldn’t be able to provide. If you use that language, they would get sued or they would be. They wouldn’t be compliant. So, you know, I would say the one that you can use, there is confusion about your future. You should have crystal clear, accurate readings on what your financial future looks like. And if you don’t, and if you’re confused or you’re wondering, that’s because you’re not getting the right intel. And we can give you that.
Matt :So here’s one that I feel like it’s almost too obvious. So this is why I’m asking you. And if it is obvious, then, okay, it’s obvious. Sometimes things are that way.
Donald Miller :A pain relief Cream, a pain relief cream, you write it’s painful. However, first of all, you should just go with pain and ease of use at the same time. You want to differentiate cream from a pill. And I would say that’s definitely like a secondary reason. Not the primary one. The easy one is pain. So you can even easily say something like, you know, why are you taking pain relief for your entire body when only your elbow hurts? Use our cream.
You could say, why are you using global solutions to a local problem? But I honestly think in terms of sound bites, if it hurts, put cream on it. So whatever that cream is called, you know, if that cream is called X cream or whatever pain goo, if it hurts, put pangu on it. I’d put that on every bottle on the header of the website as the email signature of every single employee. If it hurts, put paengu on it. Chick Fil A has made. They make about $20 billion a year off. Three words. Eat more chicken. So don’t overthink this.
Matt :Yeah. Oh, I love that. Maybe one or two more. So this was actually from a friend of mine. He runs. I’m not going to name the app, but it is an app that helps you learn foreign languages.
Donald Miller :Okay.
Matt :And he’s a huge fan of yours, by the way. So.
Donald Miller :Yeah. What would you say would be the villain to learning a foreign language? I guess. I mean, it’s the inability to understand what people are saying. Right. I mean, that’s really it, you know, so however you want to word that, you’d need a sound bite. Talk to anybody anywhere in the world. Right. How different would your trip to France be if you could actually understand what people are saying? I might actually do something like talk like a local, you know, or something like that. I might go that direction. Communicate with anybody anywhere in the world would be a great one.
You could say a lack of connection is the villain. You should be able to connect with anybody anywhere. You can, say, connect with the world. I mean, on and on and on. But the problem is if I’m in Mexico or I’m in France or something and people start speaking too quickly in a language that I’m not familiar with. Feel like an idiot, you know, there you go. There’s another villain. You feel like an idiot. Like when you travel abroad, do you feel like an idiot because you can’t speak a language? We can change that in about six weeks, you know. So there you go.
Maat :Yeah. Just shifting gears a little bit. There’s a. There’s a line in the book here.
This one really stood out to me. No, I did not memorize it, but I came close. Why is nearly every sentence in every novel about conflict? So this is Donald asking this, because a good writer knows that conflict is how you get people’s attention. This is also why, going back to the political realm here, why every politician wants their constituents to believe that the country is going to haven in a hand basket. If it weren’t, why would anybody need them? And you go into. Right. You know, it’s true of the news paraphrasing here that the news didn’t, you know, lead with what bleeds, so to speak. We’d all go out, you know, fly a kite with your. Your kids. Right. So I read that, and I think of things, you know, like how we poll voters and they say they hate negative ads, but negative ads work. That’s right.
Donald Miller :That’s why there are so many of them.
Matt :Yeah. And so we. We read about conflict and. And I’m putting my mind in how I was thinking of this, which is like, it could go really negative really fast. And we want to avoid that, but it works. So how do we use conflict in our marketing, specifically in a way that doesn’t. Like, I want to be able to sleep at night knowing that I didn’t use some sort of, like, conflict that was unethical or over the top. Well, let me.
Donald Miller :Let me say this to everybody listening. You’re feeling your gut instinct about what is too negative is going to be about 50% of where you actually need to be to get anybody’s attention. In other words, you’re going to have to be twice as dramatic as you’re comfortable with to even get anybody to turn their head. And the other thing is, it just. It’s just not going to come off as drama. It feels dramatic to you.
But listen, I was in an Uber not very long ago, and the guy said, what brings you to town? Business or pleasure? I said, business. He said, what sort of business are you in? I thought, well, here’s my chance. Let me see if I can hook this guy. I said, I’m a messaging guy. When people have an idea or a product or a vision and they can’t figure out how to talk about it to get people’s attention, they call me. Because if they don’t call me, they get ignored. And I make sure they don’t get ignored, that sounds dramatic in my mind, but does it sound dramatic in yours? You know, it doesn’t sound dramatic.
Matt :Not at all.
Donald Miller :Yeah. Instead of, I’m a messaging guy, I help people clarify Their message, well, that’s without drama. That’s without negativity.
Matt :I’m bored. Yeah, that was bored. Yeah.
Donald Miller :I can be two things. I can be the messaging guy, helps you clarify your message, or I can be the guy who stops you from being ignored by everybody so that people pay attention to you. Now, being ignored is a really quick way to die. Not being ignored, being able to get attention is a survival mechanism. And so I’m selling survival, which is. Goes back to the very first point we said.
Matt :Yeah,
Donald Miller :So death is dramatic. And I’m not talking about physical death. I’m talking about, like, social death and emotional death and those sorts of things. You know, the quicker you can actually associate your brand with some sort of death, the death of the value of your home. Right. The death of your retirement.
The death of, you know, whatever you want to associate it, maybe not in those exact words, but somehow with something a little bit dramatic. Watch engagement go up. Just watch it. Yes, you can be too dramatic. Yes, you can be too negative. Worked with many clients who thought they were being too dramatic and too negative, but I’ve never worked with a single client who actually was because they think they’re coming off as dramatic and they’re just not. They’re not at all.
Especially if I’m looking at a screen. If I’m looking at a screen, you’re up against serious Hollywood level $100 million drama. You watch any action thriller, that dude’s about to die 75 times by the end of the movie. And now here you are on my Instagram, you know, talking about how your grandmother started a company and how you’re so proud of what you’ve accomplished as a family. Give me a break. You’re going to get ignored.
Matt :I’m curious, knowing all these things about, like, you just mentioned Hollywood stuff. Are you, like, the worst person in the world to go to the movies with?
Donald Miller :The story structure and story formulas are so powerful that even I get sucked in without even knowing why I’m being sucked in. I have to look at it in hindsight and say, well, it’s because of this, this, and that. Do I analyze it quite a bit? And if. If a movie’s not working, I can pretty much tell you why and so become a little more critical in that regard. But no, it hasn’t ruined movies for me.
Matt :I was just curious because, I mean, that’s something that I noticed. It. It became less true after about two years where I wasn’t thinking all the time about it. Like I was when I got it but yeah, I would be watching movies. And it was just the weirdest thing because I’m like, we’re about five minutes from something happening, you know?
Donald Miller :Yeah.
Matt :And I remember, like, I can’t remember what movie it was, but it was like a kids movie. And I remember going pretty. I pressed pause. Like, how long is this movie? Like, there should be a guide by now, you know? Right. I hear that. A guy. And I mean, I kid you not, it was like within 40 seconds. Boom. Guide. I’m like. And there we go.
Donald Miller :I remember telling my wife that we were watching a James Bond movie, an old James Bond movie. And James Bond is in one boat heading out to the ocean and there are two bad guys in another boat chasing them. And I said to my wife, I said, one of those bad guys is going to fall out of the boat.
Fell out of the boat. And she was like, how did you know that? I said, because the climactic scene has to be mono. A mono. You can’t have two guys against one. It’s got to be one guy who’s one. So I’m sitting there watching, going, why are there two guys in that boat? This is not setting up the climactic. They got to get rid of one of these guys. And so. And of course he falls out of the boat. And. And so bedsy was like, you’re some sort of savant. I’m like, no. Once you understand the rules, you can trick people into thinking you’re a lot smarter than you are. Yeah. That is one of the side benefits, by the way. I’ve learned this stuff.
It’s like parlor tricks. It is a little bit. Here’s a fun parlor trick. I wrote about it in the book. But I occasionally, about once a year, teach a writing workshop at my house in a room called the carriage house. It’s a big room, has maybe a thousand books on the bookshelf. And I’ll say to somebody, get up and pull a book off the shelf. And they’ll pull a book off the shelf and I’ll say, open it. Put your finger down. Anywhere you want. Open. Put the finger down. I go, let me tell you what that paragraph’s about. And they’re like, are you serious? I go, yeah. Before you read it, let me tell you what it’s about. It’s about conflict. That’s what that paragraph about somebody having a tough time at something.
Now read it. I have never missed. Yeah. Now it’s true for about 70% of the time. So at some point I’m going to miss and I’m going to go, okay, find another paragraph. But a good writer, and those. Those books on my shelf are good books. A good writer knows if you’re not talking about conflict, you’re losing the audience.
Matt :Yeah. So I read that in the new version about four or five days ago, and I, the same day I had started reading, you know, post apocalyptic, you know, what happens if America got nuked to the point of oblivion? What happens after that? Right?
Donald Miller :Yeah.
Matt :And guess what?
Donald Miller :Yeah,
Matt :it’s conflict. So I’m reading through this and I’m like, even like the little things, you know, like when they’re just sitting on the riverbank talking, these two lovers are sitting there and I’m going, well, they’re having conflict. It’s between them now it’s not between them and survival, death with the local gangs. You know, or nuclear radiation. They’re having conflict.
Donald Miller :Yeah. The relief. You watch the next movie. The relief of conflict. Parts of the movie lasts for about six seconds and then something else comes up.
Matt :Yeah.
Donald Miller :You can’t let the audience off the hook. Well, at the end you can, because that’s what everybody wants. Right. But you can’t do it until you get there.
Matt :Yeah. I mean, so true. Unless you’ve got a sequel. There has to be some resolution. Of course, at the end, too. I will just warn you guys, reading this book, for some of you, you’ll love it in the sense of. Then you’re going to watch these things and you’re going to be looking for it and you’re going to play the savant. And I will warn you, maybe a few of you will be a little bit annoyed that you know what’s going to happen.
Donald Miller :Yeah, exactly.
Matt :It’s. You know, but. But like you said, if it’s a good story, I mean, I found myself completely getting sucked into the story and not remembering that I was.
Donald Miller :Yeah,
Matt :I went through that phase where I was studying it so deep that I was like, is this is going to happen? You know, like I said, I’m looking at my watch. Well, you know, I looked at my watch. It wasn’t that great of a movie to begin with, you know.
Donald Miller :Yeah, well, and you can figure out why. You know, too many heroes want too many things. Couldn’t figure out what the lead protagonist objectives were again. The guy didn’t show up to help the hero. The hero didn’t save the cat. You know, that’s a Blake Snyder term for the hero. Wasn’t likable.
You know, on and on and on and on. We went and saw Megalopolis. It’s Francis Ford Coppola’s new movie. Oh, wow, genius film. I mean, the guy who made the Godfather, right. Win Academy awards for Godfather 1 and Godfather 2 spent a hundred, something like $100 million making this movie. It’s got. It’s got Adam Driver, it’s got all these famous people in it. Worst movie I’ve ever seen. Period. Worst movie I have ever seen. And my buddy and I, Thad, went in to see it. And 25 minutes in, I want out of here. But I don’t know how to leave with that. Like, maybe his dad’s liking it, I don’t know.
So Thad leans over and he says, do you know what in the hell is happening in this movie? And I go, I don’t. But the Seahawks are on television at the sports Bar across the street, you want to go get some nachos and watch football? And he goes. He just. I don’t even think he answered. He just stood up and walked out because he was breaking every rule. Because these, you know, these guys get a little arrogant and they think the rules don’t apply to them. The rules never stop applying to you. And by the way, let’s apply this to anybody who’s in business. If you think you have such a great product that you don’t need to talk about it, you’re going to go bankrupt.
Matt :Yeah.
Donald Miller :Because people find out about your product by hearing or reading words. And if you don’t get the words right, nobody’s going to find out whether your product’s good at all anyway. So you got to. You got to use these formulas. You got to figure it out.
Matt :Yeah. So as we wrap up, just two final questions. Donald, first of all, thank you for doing this.
Donald Miller :This has been my pleasure. What an honor.
Matt :Amazing. And guys, I just cannot stress enough. Get the book and read. It is a very simple read because, I mean, there are a lot of stories. He, Like I said, it’s very meta. He practices what he preaches. There’s a couple parts where I’m like, I see. It’s like in step three, for example, I see how all seven steps are in the third step, and it becomes like this micro thing. And it.
Donald Miller :Yeah,
Matt :Again, that’s just how I studied the book, and it kind of messed with my head a little bit, guys. It’s made a huge impact on our business and really helped us, like, we follow the framework. I can tell you when we don’t follow the framework because I want to say something else or I just feel like doing something. Nine times out of 10, those messages fall flat and it’s pretty obvious. So with that said, I’m curious, you know, again, this. It’s been nine, eight years since the book came out. Nine years since I first heard about storybrand. Because, again, I just happen to know the right people who were, I think, were in some of those early workshops that you’re testing it out.
Donald Miller :Yeah, we took Michael through it before the first book was ever printed.
Matt :Yeah, I’m curious, like, what’s evolved, you know, in the framework or in your thinking? Is there something where nine years ago you were saying X, but now you’ve seen that it’s Y? Anything like that that you’ve seen?
Donald Miller :Well, we added the controlling idea to Building a story Brand 2.0, which was a very useful filter that was not in building StoryBrand 1.0, you’d have to read the book to understand, you know, we added that. We added a lot more about the villain and then all of the stories. The difference between 1.0 and 2.0, though, in my heart, was as I was reading 1.0, I had been presenting it kind of as a professor, if you will, for a couple of years. But when I went to write the book, I was like, I believe this is true.
I believe it, and I’m going to put it in the book. But by the time building A story when 2.0 came around, I had no doubts. Not only had I had no doubts, I had been in enough conversations with enough stakeholders in extremely urgent arenas like national security, that I now know the stakes as to what’s going to happen if some people don’t get this right. The war between Churchill and Adolf Hitler was a war of words. And they were both extremely effective. One for evil and one for good.
Matt :Yeah.
Donald Miller :So I. I wrote Building Storyboard 2. 0 with much more fervor in terms of, you gotta get this right. You’ve gotta get it right for your business, for your family. Our leaders need to get it right, because words create worlds. And if the good guys don’t create the right words, the bad guys are always better at it.
Lies don’t have to be nuanced. Lies can be very simple. The truth is always very nuanced. So it’s a challenge to tell the truth in simple language. Sugar is pretty easy to metabolize, and so are lies, but the truth is actually nuanced. So it’s a bigger challenge to tell the truth well, and with sound minds. We all know what happens when people’s minds are hijacked and are radicalized. And all that radicalization is happening with words.
Matt :Yeah, I mean, you can go to, you know, tobacco companies. I mean, if you study that back in the 70s and 80s, I mean, that’s. I don’t know how you don’t classify what they did as evil to know what.
Donald Miller :Very hard to. And those tobacco companies went and bought processed food companies, you know, so now they’re using the same tactics on getting us to eat.
Matt :RJR and Nabisco for a reason. I think they changed their name. I don’t remember what they changed it to, but they realized, you know, maybe we don’t want to associate our crackers with, you know, the Reynolds. Emily.
Donald Miller :Yeah, they might be just as addictive,
Matt :But ironically, the Reynolds family, if it wasn’t for the Reynolds family, I guess they did do some good. They funded my dad’s alma mater, so. Know, I don’t know if you know that story, but they literally moved Wake Forest University from Wake Forest, North Carolina, to Winston Salem because they want daughter to go there and didn’t want her to go two hours away.
Donald Miller :I don’t know that. I know that they make some really good steel because my touring bike is a Reynolds Steel, anyway.
Matt :Oh, I didn’t even have that. Reynolds Aluminum. It’s the same company. They’re in everything now.
Donald Miller :Yeah, it’s a Reynolds Steel. Reynolds wrap. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, a lot of these companies do. First of all, they create hundreds of thousands of jobs. And there’s some downside to some of this production that is unfortunate that most companies, most American companies are actually very conscientious about it and do things about it. We. That’s a whole other topic. But if they don’t tell us all the good that they’re doing, the negative will always win the day.So all the more reason that you need really good, positive. You need to get your story out there so that somebody doesn’t write your story for you.
Matt :Don and I are both assuming that your product is ethical and you’re an ethical person and you want what’s right for people. And if you do, you have to get the word out and you have to be able to market effectively. And like you said earlier, there’s 3,000 to 5,000 messages a day, and there’s no way we can process even a tenth of those. Make yours one that is heard. You know, again, in the nine years since you’ve been doing this publicly, I know you had the publishing company, but then, like, the nine years since you’ve been a marketing guy, so to speak, or anything that you’ve learned that you would want to share as we wrap up here.
Donald Miller :Yeah. Here’s what Building a story Brand 2.0 is going to do for you. In order for people to understand why they should buy your product or follow you as a leader, they’re having to burn calories. They’re processing the information and figuring out what’s in it for them. The more calories you spend clarifying your message, which, by the way, is you’re going to burn some calories doing it. Unless you use storybrand AI. The more calories you burn clarifying your message, the fewer calories anybody has to burn to engage you. And we have a mantra around my office, and it’s don’t make people think.
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Matt :Yeah.
Donald Miller :That would be my final word to you. Why should you read Building a story brand 2.0? Why should you create a brand script with seven talking points because you need to stop making people think. It’s very arrogant of you, by the way, to sit there and go, my product is so good that people are going to pour a glass of scotch and sit down and try to understand what I’m selling them for an hour. No, they’re not. You need a sound bite.
Matt :Love it. Well, Donald, thank you so much for doing this. It has been an absolute pleasure. And I know people are going to get a ton out of not only this, but the book and storybrand AI. So I’m excited for them to check all those out.
Donald Miller :Thanks, Matt. It’s great getting to know you a little bit.
Matt :That right there was a masterclass in how to cut through the noise and actually get people to pay attention. If there’s one thing to take away from this episode, it’s that marketing is not about sounding smart. It is about being clear. You know, growing up we were taught it has to be a minimum of six pages. And you know, the way to get an A in English class was to use a bunch of big words and open the thesaurus. Yeah, that’s what it was about. Using big words and sounding smart.
That’s not what effective marketing is. As he says, your audience’s brains are wired to conserve energy, which means if your messaging is too complicated, vague or boring, they’re going to tune out. He broke down in this episode. Exactly. How to simplify your message, how to use conflict to grab attention, how to make your audience feel like the hero of the story. And let’s be honest, if you’re not making sales as easily as you’d like, if you’re not getting affiliates as easily as you’d like, chances are your messaging could use some work.
And that’s where his book Building a story Brand 2.0 comes in. Hands down, one of the best marketing books of all time. Updated version. It’s even better. I love that there are some stories because there are a couple stories where it triggered a thought in my mind that was different than if he had like the first version because, you know, there’s just something about story, right? That’s, that’s what the book’s all about. So if you want the step by step process, this is the book to read.
Even if all you do is end up using his AI tool, you know, which I’ve got links to the book and the AI tool in the show notes, you still should understand the framework. It’s going to help you. So my calls to action to you grab the Building a story brand 2.0 book link in the show notes. Check out Donald’s site and the Story brand tools at StoryBrand AI. Again, the links in the show notes there as well. Seriously, go back and listen. Do not just move on. I would recommend going back and listening taking notes. If you were listening to this somewhere where you couldn’t take notes, take notes. And then most importantly, take what you learn. Simplify your messaging.
Watch what happens when your audience finally gets it. So those are some of my biggest takeaways. I’d love to hear from you what yours were. Text me at 260-217-4619. You can share your biggest takeaway. Ask questions. You know anything about this episode? Or just in general, anything you Want to know. because I promise you, you don’t want to miss the next episode. It’s going to be amazing. I’ll see you then.
See you soon.