11 Marketing Trends for 2025
A little late on this one.
Still, worth putting it on the record, so we can kick back at the end of the year and see how it all panned out.
The theme under most of these is an extension of the last couple years:
Trust is extremely low.
And burnout and fatigue is high. Which means it’s hard for businesses to feel creative.
The plus side?
It means your audience’s radar for quality and depth is extremely high.
(Just today, Ruby was saying how they’re putting on another Dinner Club in March. Which is a private event for women. And the uptake has been very fast. I also just saw a local gym sold out a very unique event for the second year in a row too. People are hungry, for good stuff.)
OK, Here we go:
1 - Sell by chat, chat bots, fast call booking funnels, nurture sequences and other front end tactics will become less effective.
People will also start to notice the difference in client lifetime value based on *how* the person come into your world, with outreach and bots being lower quality entry points. Clients that enter your world on their terms will stay for longer and get better results.
2 - Interest overlap marketing and brand building will be more effective.
One example of this is the Dinner Club stuff that Ruby and Emilia created that I mentioned above. Small events, that aren't directly related to their service. They’re done purely with the guest in mind. So that women can get together for a dinner and meet each other. Another example I saw was an accountant writing children’s books, that infused some basic stuff about money in them. Not the main offer. But excellent brand building.
3 - Long form written content will outperform for some audiences.
If you haven’t seen the email, Substack and article space already surging, again, then it’s worth checking out. (Substack users grew almost 50% in only five months in 2023/2024. My guess? That growth has and will continue). Long form content - like this article - has one big advantage, it helps you build trust at levels that just ain’t possible in posts and reels.
4 - Written copy in Instagram stories will keep doing well.
It’s a pattern interrupt, and offers a private moment with the creator that leads to conversations… Almost feels like a ‘rest’.
5 - Live events to play an even stronger role in brand building, if not direct marketing and sales.
Whether for coaches and consultants, service providers or even retail - getting people together in a room solves the trust issue a lot faster, and also creates a sense of belonging and community. We'll also be seeing some smart, unexpected collaborative marketing this year, bringing unique business worlds together.
6 - AI will be important but not just how people think.
Sure it’ll help a few with productivity et cetera. But also it’ll play a role in driving people away from social media. And make the trust deficit bigger. When you go to an event, or read a book or long form article (say Substack), there’s what it is - written copy with personality - and what it isn’t - it's a break from short videos of people and businesses promoting themselves. AI will be helpful in parts, but we’re going to actively look for places to go that are less clogged with AI too.
7 - World Building is more important.
But back-story and origin story type of content will play a smaller role in marketing narratives. Why? Because demonstration, and sharing relevant slices of life and your ‘world’, as you go, builds the relationship. Which is the goal. Backstory became a ‘hack’ that social media content creators exploited, and is not as relevant as what’s happening now.
8 - The era of quality:
Leather bound books, quality clothing, quality of coaching, quality coffee, quality onboarding programs, quality programs with cool merch. Some deeper thought is going to be required to come up with really good stuff that people are missing in this post-modernist, minimalist hangover. Warning - when you do the work to think deeper, expect others to replicate what you did.
9 - It’s going to be harder for consultants, coaches and mentors to sell stuff with only short form content (audience trust issues).
Making consistent long form marketing or live events key.
10 - ‘Depth’ is attractive.
Depth of expertise in your service, depth of thinking, depth of world. Surface level stuff is everywhere, but depth can’t be faked. The value of depth for the audience is that it both offers a paradigm shift, and helps them in identity transformations. It’s also more attractive for the businesses, because it creates resilience and stability as you grow (rather than growing through more sales of a shallow offer).
There are a bunch of ways to create more depth. One of the easiest? Research, demonstrate and share more specifics and details of your world and craft. Most marketing, goes to a surface level, that’s already covered by other podcasts and experts. But if you can go deeper, and more specific, then it’s easier to stand out.
11 - There’s a growing gap between ‘content’, and ‘content that matters’.
Regular content ain’t worth much, anymore. Partly because of supply and demand. Content that matters, is worth a bunch. Often, the difference is timeliness. For example I've tried re-sending an email from a year ago that originally went great, only for it to bomb second time round. Find out what your audience is thinking about ‘today’, rather than last year, and engagement will jump.
Look, only time will tell.
And either way, the world is on offer for those that show up for it.
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The Creative World Building Mindset
Any business owner can create a deeper world that’s more unique. And, one of the characteristics of someone who will do well with a ‘world building’ approach to business versus someone who likes the idea, but would do better simply following industry tactics, is that the world builder is seldom afraid to try something that’s new to them.
Furthermore, they’ll almost always be happy to do do something that might be new for their entire industry. In fact, they often have a disdain for business tactics used by their their market. This may be because they have a lack of trust in the masses. Or, they may not be interested in climbing the same ladder of popularity of their industry. They also tend to have a high self concept, through years of getting results. This means they’re looking for ways to buck the trend. And do things their way.
In simple terms, if a business owner can’t come up with an idea. Flesh it out. And present it to the market in something as simple as an email, resource, or a social media post, they won’t be able to build a unique world.
If nothing else, their overthinking at each check-point will run so high that they’ll be exhausted before they get any traction. And will fall back into a tactical, or even passive way of thinking. Or stalling.
To build a different kind of business, or more unique world, you have to be OK with people rejecting you.
By going a different path, you’re going against at least some of the status quo.
So you can’t care too much about what other people think.
In fact, if we pick any business that’s not following the crowd, and building a highly addictive world, you can see this in their face straight away.
They have an ‘edge’. They’re focused on doing good work in the way that they see as best.
They aren’t hedging.
And in many cases, it’s much more. They’re putting on a show. They realise that as you flesh out your business and bring your offers and service to the people, you don’t just need a skillset, you need to turn that skillset into a performance.
Any business can create a deeper world. But those who excel often have a certain look to them. They’re on a mission. you can see it in someone’s face. It’s not a faked nonchalance. But a real focus on the mission rather than caring too much about what others think.
This also forges a confidence that can’t be faked.
Building a unique or creative business world is a totally different way of thinking than following an exact template of someone else who’s popular right now. Like any good business it’s driven from a mission to help people and make a difference.
But it’s backed by a lack of hesitation.
The creator never hesitates because the right time is always now. The mission must move on.
Believability and finding the ‘tone’ of your marketing
Well, here I am in my office, it’s particularly early this morning and I’m in between books, so I looked over some old copies of Gary Halbert’s ‘Boron Letters’ as I had my coffee.
If you’ve never seen these, you can get ‘em straight from the internet, and they’re a series of letters the late copywriter Gary Halbert wrote to his son Bond, from the Boron Penitentiary.
If you’re into writing, or copywriting, my guess is you’ll learn more from studying the Halbert Letters than almost any book about how to actually do copywriting!
Anyway, in one of the final letters, (I think it was around letter 25, I’m not sure because the top was cut off of the last few when I printed them), he talks a little bit about believability in copy.
The other day I was watching a video from a guy that owns a gym.
He was showing this acrobatic flying kick, and saying how anyone could do this acrobatic trick, if they just followed these ‘three steps’. What’s the problem with that kind of message? Exactly! It might be true in some sense, but it ain’t believable. A lot of people know they couldn’t even do step one (which was a basic jump).
So ‘believability’ isn’t just about the results of your service (we’ve talked about setting up a success story the ‘right’ way before), but also the general receptiveness to your message.
And when you are more ‘believable’, people can understand how you help them, and find it easier to work with you.
Well, in letter 25 (I think it was 25), Halbert talks about one way to create believability, is to give exact details.
For example, if your service is with car owners, instead of saying “most car owners”, you say “77.6% of car owners.” Instead of “you can lose lots of weight” write “and the average reported weight loss over a 31-day period was 37.5 pounds for men and 26.3 pounds for women.”
Of course you need to know the subject at a much deeper level, but it’s more believable.
Also, did you notice when I talked about which letter he wrote this I was specific to letter 25 in the brackets? Hopefully you didn’t notice at the time, because that’s part of the writing style. But that’s a little detail that makes it more specific, and if you don’t know me, this can help create a connection.
So one way to create believability is to use specifics.
Another way to create believability is to not use broad claims. There’s a coffee shop outside of town I go past sometimes when I drive north to go spearfishing. There’s a big, haggard sign out the front, with the words “the best coffee in town”. It’s a pretty ghetto looking shop, and I could be wrong, but I highly doubt it’s the best coffee in town, or else I would have heard about it, having lived here for four years!
It’s the same with luxury goods. One time I was with Ruby in a Hermés shop in Sydney. You have to line up to go in there. And you know what? There’s no claims anywhere in a Hermés shop. Imagine if they had a big sign up saying something like “the highest quality belts”, or “luxury goods”! That would be a sure way to signal that it ain’t luxury.
So avoiding claims is a great way to increase believability (for a service business? Use success stories instead).
Now the one I really wanted to cover today, is ‘tone’.
Have you noticed since the start of this article, there’s a certain tone to it? It’s easy to read, right? Hopefully you didn’t notice as you went, because again, that’s part of the style. But what I do is I match the ‘tone’ that I would have when I’m talking to you at the dinner table. Or the breakfast table in this case because it was so early. Or we’re training together at the gym. Whatever.
The idea here is that I want to have a ‘tone’ that meets you where you’re at.
Imagine you walk into a café, and you grab a seat next to someone because the rest of the seats are taken, and you decide to talk to them, so you start yelling, or talking really fast all of a sudden. Well, they won’t be able to handle you, will they? Because they’re relaxed having a flat white. And you’re coming in like a freight train.
Same thing with the ‘coach speak’ you see everywhere now. That kind of enlightened advice giving ain’t a normal way of talking to people, so it often fails in social media videos, or email marketing or whatever.
Of course, sometimes you want to change the tone, or ramp things up. If you’re naturally getting excited about something you have or whatever, you can let that come through. But if you have a tone that they can’t handle, or can’t hear because it’s incompatible with whatever they’re doing right now (sitting on the train, on the couch, or whatever), a lot of times you’re just going to lose people. Because you’re forcing yourself onto them.
And the other thing is your tone will attract or repel. For example, I’m not the best person to work with if you’re brand new in business, and don’t have a service. And the brand new people tend to froth on the motivation and cheerleading style a lot more. So, I don’t do that in my writing. Plus it’s not really who I am as a person.
The final thing I’d say is tone is a particularly big thing right now, because there’s a lot of negative tone in the culture over the last few years. And hype or anxiety. So if you meet people with more hype or a lot of hard ‘advice’, they tend to block it out. But if you meet them with a more relaxed tone, they’re more receptive.
Given that you know what you’re talking about.
Now, here’s a way you can practice a few of these things. This will seem a bit random, but it’s all about practice. If you look around you, you’ll have a desk, or a table, or something. Don’t look too closely! Now, try to describe what is around you in detail, without studying it. Write that out if you can.
Then allow yourself a few minutes to look around closely at whatever is there. Pens, rulers, a window, whatever. And again, write a few words describing your setting.
If you compare the two, you’ll see how much you’re naturally picking up on details. If there’s a huge gap with this exercise, it means you’re ‘off’ a little. And you want to pay more attention. Of course when you actually write something we don’t need all the details. Just enough to create an image in the mind. But most people generalise so much that they need some more details or specifics, to make it believable.
The other thing you can do with the tone, is, after you write out your next email, or record your next podcast, listen back to it. And notice the tone. Does it feel like you’re being invited in? Like someone’s welcomed you into their home, to sit down for a tea or coffee? Or, does it feel like you’re being pushed away?
That’s the tone. And if you get the tone right, alongside the specifics, it’s much more believable.
This is one of the ways I check myself. If it feels like it’s been ‘written’ or if it feels like ‘copywriting’, then I’m ‘off’. Because that pushes people away. And my goal is to invite people in. So then I’ve got to look at it a little more.
You know what got me thinking about all this? Well, what kicked it off was I was having a coffee and nobody else was around, so I thought I’d invite you in!
'Ten Point' live events checklist
Few weeks back, we ran our second live, in-person event for the year.
Frankly. It was a big success. A bunch of eager creators made it. Engagement was frothy. The kingfish for lunch was on the money, and everyone walked away with a few more friends, and a full belly and bubbling mind.
These in person events are a key for us. Partly because they are fun. And partly because there’s a much deeper level of learning and engagement than anything you can get on a computer screen.
Anyway, I tried to make an effort as we went along, to document the process.
I did a couple of podcasts and emails…
Kept notes in my diary…
But since we finished we’ve had a lot of questions about events. And, I know a lot of people want to run an event, but ain’t sure how, or maybe are afraid it will be boring or nobody will show up.
Fear not my friend. Here I’ve compiled a kind of a ‘checklist’.
A list of steps or tasks that made sure everything ran smoothly, and that help make sure the whole thing is unique, and not another one of those ‘business mastermind, stand on the stage and feel important’ things. How boring.
First, a short note on the idea of having a ‘theme.’
There’s a line from the late Herman Melville, who wrote Moby Dick:
“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.”
A theme is critical.
In fact, there could be a whole article on picking a good theme.
It’s how you get that ‘X-Factor’. And this is something that people struggle with, because it’s creative thinking. You can’t really copy another event, because the theme has to align with your overall business story or theme.
The first time I saw this played out (in a customer service setting, no less), was at Disneyland as a little kid.
I don’t know if it’s changed since then. But Walt Disney was known for his hard work (borderline obsessive), and attention to detail. In particular, with this whole idea of ‘theme.’
And basically is realising that it’s the vision and emotion that drive a memorable experience, much more than it is the facts and information.
So while the content of the event is key, the context, or experience the person has when they’re learning is just as important.
At Disneyland, you got lost into these unique worlds, and everything down to the music, costumes, backstory, and smallest character or ride details was planned out. In fact, each ride had its own theme too.
And so it is with your live event.
As you go through the checklist, keep in mind that tying it together with a theme that matches your business will make the big difference you might be looking for…
The Checklist
The first five points are a little more macro. This is the stuff that I like to think about a couple of months out.
The second half are more specific, and will vary with each event.
I’ve tried to focus on things that most people forget, but that are super important to have the whole thing run smoothly.
1 - Who is it for?
It’s impossible to run a live event that everyone that everyone in your audience will froth over.
Much better to choose a sub-set of your audience.
This could be people in a particular area. People with a particular interest or passion.
For example, in our last event, it was for Creator Club members, who wanted to travel to Newcastle, and learn a business leadership framework to grow their business. People came from Canada, Germany, and all parts of Australia. But not everyone. Some people couldn’t make it. It sounds simple, but by designing the event only for those who could show up, we didn’t have to organise live streaming or any online delivery.
This question seems basic. But it’s always worth covering, because now you can tailor every detail of the event to bring a better experience for your specific crew.
Here you can also think about how many people you can fit, or what the capacity of the event might be.
2 - What is it for?
An event can be tough to run. People travel. You burn a bunch of energy. It’s hard work on the day.
So, what are you doing it for?
To feel important?
Because you feel like you’re supposed to do one?
These may not be great drivers for success.
What is the change you want to make with your event?
To do this part well, try to get to one core thing. That sounds crazy, I know. Because hey, everyone is in the room, you could teach a million different things to people… And it would probably feel great too.
But that ain’t going to help anyone.
When there’s too much content, or vague content, whatever went in one ear will just fly out the other as soon as they leave.
In the last event we ran, the one topic was the ‘New Game Framework’. This is a business framework with six questions. In other events, we’ve covered ‘content creation.’ In another one, it was ‘character building’ for personal brand (i.e. a subset of personal brand).
Frankly. This wasn’t always the case for me. I used to try and ram too much into events and retreats. But the problem was, I would get exhausted, and people didn’t implement.
Since I’ve stripped it back to one core ‘function’, people now know why they’re in the room, it’s easier to teach, and it’s much easier for them to implement.
3 - How do you want them to feel?
The type of experience people have will be what sticks with them.
Think of this.
Going back to Disneyland - I don’t know if you’ve been… and if not, think of another theme park. Which rides do you remember the most easily? The rollercoaster? The big drops? The waterslides? Usually we remember the events that have one strong, core emotion attached to them. This penetrates our mind more powerfully, and it’s almost like our memory has something to hold on to.
Clothing brands are great at tying a particular emotion to their product, and we can do the same with events.
Do you want them to feel excited? Grounded? Thrilled? Connected?
What is the core emotion (typically in line with your overall brand).
For us, it was ‘energised.’ - which is fairly typical of our events.
Then once we had that emotion, we picked the colours (gold, white), venue, activities (improv storytelling, speaking et cetera)… everything else falls into place.
4 - What’s the one big idea?
This taps back into the theme, or the ‘what’s it for’. Reiterate the core big idea for your event. Meaning, when people walk away, if they have this one thing, the event will be a success.
For us, the New Game framework was about uniqueness. It’s a way to own a particular ‘story’ for your business, and stand out in the crowd of same same businesses that saturate every market.
Uniqueness ain’t the emotion. The emotion is ‘energised.’
Uniqueness is the big idea.
What is your big idea?
5 - How will they learn this and the ‘all important’ runsheet
There’s a type of learning called ‘LOPI’ - learning by observation and pitching in. It’s a style of learning used in Central America a lot with kids. And, to be honest, it’s how you and I tend to learn best, especially when we were growing up. Even though it’s the opposite to how a lot of school was set up.
So for our event, we picked this as a learning style.
This means from the beginning, the event was interactive. People were speaking with each other. Sharing ideas. Coaching each other. Speaking, et cetera. We had an interactive exercise within every hour.
Then we had a framework booklet.
And I did something different this time. I kind of filled the booklet with interesting quotes and ideas from related authors, heroes, or other creators. But we didn’t go through all of that on the day. I knew that for those who were interested, when they went home, they would have something to read over, making the booklet more interesting over time.
Once you have this clear, you can set up your run sheet.
This is probably the most important thing you’ll do before you kick off, because it outlines everything in one place.
When the event starts, how the day unfolds, when lunch breaks are et cetera. The run sheet gives participants clarity, and it gives you something to stick to as the day unfolds, taking a huge amount of stress off of your shoulders.
This is one of the biggest parts of setting up for a successful event.
6 - Signup form
This wasn’t relevant for our event, because we already knew everyone. But for a lot of events, it’s important, and something a lot of people miss. For example, when I first started out doing live events with a new audience in gyms, I used to just hand a clip board around where they could sign up to my email list. Now you can do it digitally. But if I hadn’t done that with the clipboard and paper, I would have never had their contact details.
To reiterate. The email addresses from the event participants typically go into your email list.
Now if you use an event hosting company, or sell tickets or whatever, you’ll get the email addresses automatically.
But it’s still a good idea to check, because a lot of people miss this step, and the emails never end up getting onto their list.
7 - Email reminder sequence
A lot of people sign up to live events on a whim. Then what happens is, something pops up, they change their mind. Whatever. And then they don’t want to go, or can’t make it. This is a massive thing with online events. Sometimes only 30% or so will turn up.
Now in our last live event, everyone made it. But that’s rare. And probably because we went so hard on this step.
Basically, you want to set up emails to remind them that the event is coming, and continue to ‘sell’ the event.
I did this by writing the reminder emails live, then telling stories as we went.
For example, when we were a week out, I sent an email, with a short story on the behind the scenes of the prep work et cetera. Then in the last 48 hours, the reminders (24 hour, 12 hour… and sometimes if it’s an online event you can even do 1 hour) are done automatically.
8 - Event location (or zoom location details), food, parking et cetera.
This sounds so basic it hurts, but what I recommend is about three days out, sending an email titled ‘All the event info you need to know’, or similar. Something very obvious.
Then in that email, spell out exactly where everything is.
The address. Where the entry is. The carpark details. How far the walk is from the carpark. Exact details. Any include tips on traffic times, the best spot for coffee on the way in, et cetera.
Then have a clear map.
Basically, you want to give everyone an easily searchable email that has everything in one place, so they don’t end up lost without a clean the last 24 hours.
Online events are the same. Make sure to have any zoom or online meeting details very clear (even highlighted).
People are moving fast. They’re stressed. And you need to meet them where they’re at. This one email is key.
For big events, it’s a good idea to include other details of the day here too (food to bring, amenities, weather et cetera), and even another outline of the day so they know where the breaks are.
9 - Protocols on recordings
Is your event recorded? If so, when will they get it? What format will they get?
Now, we make a point of recording most of our events. But it doesn’t mean that it’s right, or that you have to.
You could make a blanket rule not to record as well.
But you need to be clear either way.
Why?
Well, some people may (or may not) want to take notes, depending on the recording situation.
Also, if the recording is video or photos, they’ll want to know if they are going to end up on camera, or in social media.
Usually people are OK with this, but not always. You want to check beforehand by outlining all the recording protocols.
10 - What is the next step for them after the event?
This kind of comes from Dan Kennedy, who used to say “Always know what you want to happen next.”
When people go away from your event, what do you want them to do?
Is there a follow up action you can give them?
Do they have a workbook?
Or a way to keep in touch so they can scheme up their own ideas or events together?
In a business mastermind I was in once, one of the coolest things was how closely a few of us kept in touch.
We kind of did this off our own back, but it’s certainly something that you could facilitate by having a directory of contact details.
You might also end the event with some kind of action or commitment.
If so, is there an accountability system you can bring in to help make sure there’s follow through?
Tell us what actions could lead to even greater success when we finish up, and that makes it easier for us to do them.
Summary
Live events are a great way to bring existing clients together, or meet new people in your business world around a topic. In fact, for most of the businesses we work with, we strongly recommend attending, co-hosting, or hosting live events.
And while every event is different, having a checklist or process to go through can make the whole thing easier, and, therefore more repeatable or tempting to run.
And that’s the whole goal.
Once you’ve gone through this checklist, you’ll be fairly close. You’re still going to have to figure out smaller logistics - decorating the room to match the theme. Making sure there’s the gluten free food for the gluten free people. Making sure you eat enough food to make it through the day et cetera.
But a lot of that stuff falls into place when you have the major pieces locked in.
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Marketing 'continuum' for service businesses
Years ago, as a young buck personal trainer, I did a bunch of strength training courses.
One was called FMA, run by a guy Mark Buckley. I think the FMA stood for Functional Movement Analysis or something. But the cool part about it, was they had this strength ‘continuum’. That’s not what they called it, I think it was strength ‘standards’. But it gave you a spectrum of where you were at with different lifts versus different age groups.
They weren’t the first to do this. But they did do it elegantly.
For example, there was ‘strong’, ‘strong +, and ‘strong ++’.
For the squat, deadlift and bench press. And it was a multiple of your bodyweight.
It wasn’t just for people who wanted to progress down the line either. It gave you an understanding of where to work with different clients. So if you worked with rugby players, for example. There wasn’t much point in going past ‘strong’. Because you could spend the rest of the time on skill development or actual practice of the sport.
So it was a good reality check.
Anyway, that was a previous life, I don’t do personal training any more. Now we work with businesses and their revenue. And a big part of that is marketing.
Marketing is a skill.
And in the trust economy, that skill is all about avoiding the saturated claims based stuff out there, and learning to tell our business story powerfully and help our clients win. And for our business, this is also how we attract clients.
The thing about skills is, they’re learned. I remember when a friend of mine opened a new café. I went in to help them calibrate new coffee machines. Together we all pulled around 1,000 shots of espresso. Not only did the machines need to be dialled, our (their) skills needed to be fine-tuned for a horde of customers wanting their caffeine the next week.
Anyway, all this came to a head with a book I’ve spoken a lot about, which is Robert McKee’s ‘Storynomics’. In the book, he has a marketing continuum, that is really calibrated for big business. But when I saw it, I thought, you know, that looks a lot like what we teach service businesses, but just organised so cleanly.
So, here we are. McKee’s work inspiring this article - with five different ‘levels’ on the marketing continuum for service businesses.
Stage one - Bystander
When I was younger, I worked in a sail boat mast factory for a while.
I mostly did laminations, and cleaned the floors.
There was one older guy who used to walk around the factory, and then disappear into the office. He was an engineer, and had some kind of role within management. But one day in the lunch room, a fight broke out (I know, crazy), between one of the factory guys, and this management bloke.
Later, I heard the factory guy Dave, refer to the other guy as ‘Half Job’. That was his nickname apparently. He was always just watching. And didn’t seem to have a real job. He was just a bystander.
And so it is with ‘stage one’ marketing.
There’s very little marketing happening. ‘Half Job’ marketing. The Bystander might do a bit of content once in a while, when they feel good, or when they’re excited by something. But it’s typically about what’s going on in their world, and has little value to the audience.
There are also long periods of time where there is no marketing, and only consuming.
We all start here at some stage. But there is little to no impact from this ad-hoc content.
Stage two - Novice
The novice understands the importance of content. And they even have some content going out that is intended to help the audience. But, it’s off and on. And the lack of consistency means there isn’t much trust, so the audience ignores the content. (why pay attention if it’s just going to stop again?). There’s no rhythm, and thus, no incentive to return.
One example of this is when a business runs an event or puts out a new product. They might do a bit of campaign content around the event and even the benefit of the event for the audience.
But then stop once it’s over.
Stage three - Expert
The expert has consistent content that educates, inspires or entertains over time. An example of this could be a resource library, or a social media page, a podcast, articles, or something that helps the audience level up.
There’s a strong reason to come back, because the information is helpful, it helps the audience to win, and the service provider is seen as a trustworthy guide.
This is common in the health market. People might have symptoms, and the service can educate on possible underlying problems, mechanisms, and what you can do about it.
Stage four - Leader
The business moves from consistent content creation that’s based on information or education, to sustained storytelling.
The stories can be around characters in the world (if engaging enough), or, more commonly, client success stories.
Red Bull is one of the strongest examples of this. While they have one product, nobody really cares too much about what’s in it. In fact, customers know it has little nutritional value. But Red Bull takes a different angle. They became a marketing company, and spend millions on creating platforms, events, and news channels to tell the ‘high energy’ stories of sponsored athletes and customers.
This is also common in the diet industry, with before and after photos. A lot of people don’t like these. And I get that.
But it’s important to know how they work. In two photos, and a short bit of copy, you get a story. You see the character, you learn about the struggle that they had on the way to their goal, and, you see the transformation. For someone who is looking for that transformation, this can be a strong message.
You don’t have to do extreme sports, or body transformation stories.
They may not be relevant. But you can look at your service, and start to tell stories around the transformations of people who you help.
What are they able to do in their lives, as a result of your service?
Stage Five - Visionary
The visionary is not just using storytelling in content. Their whole business is story driven. Their events, the way they build teams, how they design products, how they sell, and how they lead is all driven through story.
One example of this, is if you look at how Steve Jobs ran Apple early on.
Jobs’ whole approach was based on knowing they were going to ‘put a dent in the universe’. That Apple itself was creating a story and creating a new game for people to play.
More, his Apple stores (tiles from Italy), product launches (1984 film), and even campaign collaborations were all driven through story, and focused on customer experience.
This was probably the biggest contrast to other competitors. Other companies had the tech. But Jobs understood story. He had vision, conflict, and wild results. ‘Story’ was the inner life of the company.
Summary
Getting rolling with content marketing can be hard enough.
Especially when you have clients to serve, or a business to run.
But when you start to see the long term value of marketing, it eventually becomes a nut you want to crack. And at that point, it helps to get some bearings on where you’re at and where you’re going.
The goal of course, is to move to stage four and five.
When markets were less saturated, and the internet less crowded, the earlier stages were still effective.
But now in an oversaturated market, and with trust at rock-bottom, when people go online to consume content, their defense mechanisms are already up.
Story driven content doesn’t raise the armour as much. It allows the creator to connect with the audience. And then the insight of the story can be delivered either implicitly, or explicitly.
Once you are able to produce content consistently, and understand what is most valuable to your audience, look for angles to use stories, for even more impact.
Three ways to build more trust and engagement
On the intake form that we have with businesses, there’s a box that asks: What do you need to work on? One box that is almost always ‘ticked’ is business messaging. Most people feel that they could be clearer about what they do, and how they talk about it.
It’s a fair call.
Usually though, it isn’t a ‘messaging’ problem.
Or, put another way, we find that messaging problems are usually business story problems.
If you’re clear on the business story, the messaging takes care of itself.
The words come easily.
Anyway, in a more saturated market, when the business story or messaging is off, the business can be flat, and marketing can fall on deaf ears. When the business story and messaging is clear, you can build trust and engagement over time.
People see you as a guide that can take them to a particular destination.
So to tweak our messaging to build engagement and trust, we’re really shifting the business story. Or the overarching way that we communicate what we do, and how it fits into the changing world of our clients.
There are three little tips that can be helpful here.
1 - Switch out claims for success stories
What is a claim, or claims based marketing?
When you see a gym that advertises they will help you lose five kilos, in three months, that’s a claim.
When we have a marketer tell you they will double XX leads or whatever, that is a claim.
When a yoga studio says they have the best community, or the best teachers, that’s also a claim.
In an unsaturated market, this is fine. But in a land of a million people doing a similar thing, it falls on deaf ears. Not just because a lot of claims are empty promises. But because when everyone is making claims, how are you going to stand out?
Now, while it’s true that we might always have some element of claims if we drill down enough, one way you can build more trust, is to adjust the message to focus on what you can control with the client.
For example.
Let’s say you start a strength gym. You could have three levels of ‘claim’, or mission for the buyer:
“Build incredible strength and confidence in all areas of life”
“Build full body strength”
“Get started in the gym with a custom program”
Which is the right line?
Most people will shoot for the first one. It’s more aspirational. And they’ll say, don’t tell people what you do, tell them what you do for them. And it sounds more compelling. And while I agree, it’s also vague. And, we all know that not everyone who starts at a gym, becomes a confident superhero.
Personally, while I’m the first to say that all purchases are made emotionally, the more we shift into the trust economy, the more I find the third option more attractive.
However, if there ain’t any bold claims, how do we pull at the heart strings and create compelling vision?
We showcase client results, and provide success stories that are way over and above the claim (‘super success stories’).
So we might get people started with training.
But then we show people who have had strong transformations, and tell the stories of the quests they have gone on, which show the confidence.
Each business has a particular balance here. But the focus is to ‘show not tell’.
2 - Be careful telling the client they have a problem
Seems like every few weeks there’s a new problem that we face in the world, that the news media blasts out to us around the clock.
When that problem is new, or when we sense that there’s a change happening, we pay more attention.
But when that situation stops changing? We start to ignore it.
This is because change drives attention more than a static problem. And so it is with business.
When we come out guns blazing as a service provider, and tell the customer that they have a problem with distraction, a problem with motivation, or a problem with their tax, or health, or whatever, they can go into defence mode.
This is the root of a lot of copywriting frameworks.
And while they’re designed to get under the skin, they can raise the defence mechanism of the reader, or shift the whole thing into the ‘I’ll worry about it later” basket.
Instead, we can focus on the change going on around them, and tell the story of how this is creating winners and losers.
(Those who embrace the change and use the new methods, or those who don’t).
This allows them to recognise that they may have a problem.
Types of change we can focus on?
Internal:
Ageing
Health
Strength
Growing our business
Meeting someone
Moving houses
Et cetera
External:
Shifting trends
Changes in customer behaviour (B2B)
Changes in technology
Changes in environment
Social changes
Changes in what a ‘leader’, ‘parent’, ‘husband’ et cetera now looks like…
And more.
To start with, a ‘change’ captures attention. So when you point out a change, then you can raise the stakes by showing how this change is already impacting the culture.
Some are losing. Some are adapting to the change, and winning.
3 - Sell the game, not the offer
This comes from Richard Garriott, who was one of the big inventors of online gaming. And what he did was, he created the Ultima online games, and found that once people were playing the game, they wanted to spend more money in there. And there was all kinds of opportunities for market places, and ‘offers’. But they had to be playing the game first.
And so it is with business.
Say we stick to the gym example. Well, there’s a lot of different kinds of gyms.
There are movement gyms. Strength gyms, et cetera.
So your game might be ‘bodyweight strength’ at your gym.
Well, selling the game means you’re an evangelist for that game. You want as many people playing that game as possible as a primary goal. Then they purchase your offer because it’s a stepping stone that helps them to win the game.
Now, instead of positioning as a self-serving marketer trying to make a sale…
You’re someone who’s leading a change that you want to make, and inviting people to come along.
Summary
Trust is built slowly, and, can evaporate quickly. And relies on everything from our vision all the way down to our day to day behaviour.
But the start of all of it, is in our perspective. How can we communicate our business and offer in a way that elevates our clients and where they want to go, ahead of money in our bank?
It might feel like you won’t get paid as quickly. And, that may be true to an extent.
But the opposite is you make bolder and stronger claims, they’re ignored, and, you don’t get paid at all.
Find out more about growing your service business with the Creator Club business coaching
Case studies, program details and more.
How to create a writing practice as a service business
“I'm a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character.” - Alfred Hitchcock
Well, one question is, is, why write? In a world of video, is slow, lethargic, crotchety old writing even worthwhile for the busy service business owner? It’s the videos that go viral. And the videos that build the most trust?
Or is it?
One of the decisions I made a few years back was to focus more on writing. Not to be a ‘writer’ in an ivory tower, but to use it as my medium for communication with businesses. So my main formats are books, articles and emails. Or, writing on an instagram post.
Part of this was because I always liked it. Also I just see it as the most superior. Call it bias, or whatever. But I kind of look at book authors as the top of the communication food chain. Then everyone else kind of falls underneath them. That’s just my view… Sure there are podcasts and TV stars et cetera. But there’s a reason why people know Hemingway’s name even if they never pick up a pen.
Anyway, things have worked out so far.
There’s plenty of trust. The content gets the reach. And, the contrarian in me smiles at the overflow of video out there, knowing that there’s another way, should one choose.
So a ‘writing’ practice versus a speaking practice, or whatever, is a choice.
Another thing I like is training. And, writing and training don’t have a lot in common. In one, you sit on your ass. With the other, you’re lifting weights. But there is one common thread: most people start, but don’t continue, and, on top of that, most of us think that we’re better than we are. In the training world, all we have to do is look at a ten year old weightlifter from Russia or China, and we get humbled pretty fast.
In the writing world, it’s easy to trick ourselves into thinking we’re a writer because we have written something. But in either case, it’s worth having the hubris to realise this whole thing is a lifelong practice.
And, even though it’s a practice, as a business owner, you can start to make more money as you practice.
And this is the trick.
A couple months back, I got an email from one of the creators. And she had started to write articles and send some emails. Well, on her thirteenth email ever, she put in an offer. I think it went out to thirty people or so. And a few people bought the consulting offer. That’s nothing to sneeze at. And, for anyone wanting to write better, that’s the goal. To get paid as the business owner, while you’re getting better as a writer.
So there are a few points to setting up a writing practice that sticks.
1 - Create a Reason to Write
You may say this sounds vague. But it’s key. For me, I’ve found that the more I write, the better I do, the more I can help people et cetera. It also helps me improve my work. On top of this, I look at writing as a long term thing. So that’s part of the reason. Over the years, I’ll build the reputation as a ‘writer’. Which is of course all about the ego. And, I’m totally fine with that.
So the question is, what’s your reason?
Why bother?
How can you believe in a story where it makes sense to actually put the time in?
I used ‘create’ a reason on purpose. Because you get to make this up. My reason to write won’t be the same as yours.
Your writing can be a tool to become a better communicator.
To make more money.
To help you build an audience.
To create marketing assets for your business.
Or maybe you just want to write thriller novels or be a more compelling pen pal. Whatever.
Down the line, we tend to enjoy writing just because it’s fun. And you can create cool stuff. But it takes a bit of pounding away on the keys to get to that. So you want to know your reason beforehand to get some momentum.
2 - Have a ‘Place’ to Write
While back I was reading ‘The Power of Myth’ by Joseph Campbell, and in there he was talking about how going to the cinema was more like a ritual.
So basically, we would enter the cinema, and watch these stories, with the actors et cetera, who were kind of put up on a pedestal. But what happened when Netflix and the other streaming platforms came in, is that ‘ritual’ has kind of shifted. And this is one of the reasons why the trust in celebrities and influencers is down, because the ritual has stopped, by not having to go to that same ‘place.’
And, in all kinds of rituals, the ‘place’ has a lot of importance.
And so it is with writing. Not the ‘place’ as in I’m writing this from a kitchen table now in New Zealand versus my office. But having a ‘place’ that you show up, or where the writing sits, is key.
Personally, as soon as I defined a ‘place’ to write, I started writing. It was that simple. For me, it was a blog. Then each day, the posts would get automatically emailed out to the list. Now I’ve changed that process, and I write for the articles, or the emails. Or a book each year.
But we want to have a ‘place’.
Lately, I’ve seen a lot of people get into the Substack thing. I don’t know why, but it seems to be the rage. Personally, I recommend straight email for most people, or, if they’re already posting on some other platform, just write there. For example, if they’re doing instagram or twitter, then just start using that more, but for writing.
LinkedIn is another one that could be useful. You’ve got to put up with all of the ‘I’d like to humbly announce my new job where I’m so proud to be working…’ posts. But it could still be great.
3 - Create a Rhythm
I was reading a paper a while back by a Russian physiologist, and it was talking about how every ‘system’ in nature, has to have a rhythm. If there ain’t a rhythm to it, then there ain’t a system. And so it is with training, painting, writing… We know the systems are the way that we get to the vision, or mastery, but so many people are afraid to commit to a rhythm.
But if you're writing for marketing. If you don’t have a rhythm, you just end up with start-stop marketing. Everything has a rhythm, or a cycle. The moon. The sun. Music. The working day. Your breathing. Your writing.
So to get a rhythm, we commit to writing with a frequency. Ideally daily. I mean, I came through the whole school system, and university and everything, and there are a lot of flaws with that system. But one strength is that if you want to learn something, you go in each day and you practice it. Same with writing. If you want to get better at this stuff, there’s no reason not to do it every day. But you could write daily, and ship it weekly. Or you could write weekly. Whatever.
I’m at my best with writing when I write daily. Or at least outline something. Or chip away at something. The next book. Or the next article. I would guess that it would be the same for you.
Writing is an attractive skill for a lot of service businesses.
It’s the ‘gateway’ for articles, blogs, emails, books et cetera. And it’s good for introverts or people who can’t be bothered with all the video editing, et cetera.
And there are a lot of things we can learn ‘within’ writing. Setting up articles. Coming up with ideas. Using personality and structure. But it’s helpful to look at the macro too. And really orient the mind towards the writing, if we want to get better at it. Because while it’s fun, and rewarding, it takes work my friend.
It’s more blue collar than anything.
So get clear on why you’re writing, create a place, and a rhythm, sit down and start pounding the keys.
What is your website for?
I got to this one in the usual way. Unusually. It started with a message from a coach:
“This might be more than a yes or no question. I don’t have a website at the moment. Do I need one?”
Short answer?
Yep.
But then the contrarian in me stirred because I could point to cases very close to me where businesses, including coaches just like this, didn’t have a site, and still made good money.
So we have to look a bit deeper. Let’s start with what a website is actually for.
Most people fall into one of two camps with the website.
The direct response crew tend to see it as a funnel.
Give as little freedom as possible, with direct routes to the check-out. I’m actually more aligned with direct response than the second one…
Others think it’s about making a creative, pretty page…
A place to ‘find’ the business, with good SEO. They have amazing photos, and logos, and usually link back out to their instagram page halfway down the main page. Maybe they think they might get followers (and that somehow, that’s more important than them staying on the site)? They also tend to have blog posts that feel like they were written by a machine, hoping that it helps search somehow.
We go a different route.
In a lot of the other articles, and podcasts, we’ve been talking about the ‘trust’ economy, and how this has accelerated. Basically, while this ain’t new, trust levels are now at record lows, while polarisation is at record highs.
This makes things interesting for small business.
There’s an opportunity for those who are less self-serving, and are willing to play the game properly, to establish massive amounts of relative trust, and perform quite well. And this is what we’re seeing, kind of a ‘split’.
Anyway, maybe if we had to distill the ‘trust economy’ idea down to a question, it could be this:
“What happens next?”
If we think about the way we got to where we are, it’s because business owners, leaders, and media outlets were moving too fast. They were too self serving to ask that one question in their biz-ness over the last twenty years. And managed to hit a long enough string of false claims in a row, to break down trust.
That’s how trust always works.
When we take the risk to make a promise to others, then work to keep that promise, we build trust. When we make a promise, or a claim, then break that promise, we lose trust. Trust is sequential. This is why there’s no such thing as a ‘closed’ sale - the sale never really ends (and ‘everything is marketing’).
Back to the website thing
If you think about your marketing, which is really the contact point between your business and your audience, whether that’s through networking, social media, or a podcast, this is where people are introduced to your world.
OK, so the question is “What happens next?”
Well, the thing about people is, they are curious. They’ll go down comment and thread rabbit holes just to see what other people who they don’t know are saying about a topic that they don’t agree with. In a sense, if they are intrigued by your story (marketing), they will go deeper if they can.
This is why you should always have a website. Because you can.
And because they will go to it.
You have an opportunity to clarify your business story, connect the dots in your marketing, and invite your audience into the next layer of your world (email list, articles like this one, your offer, et cetera).
[More: When you have a good site, you’ll also feel a stronger sense of identity, which is as important as anything else.]
Here we’re going to look at five jobs your website has, so that whether you go to a ‘site builder’ or you do a WIX job, or a Squarespace, you have some understanding on the why’s of each part. Then your copy and images, et cetera will make much more sense.
Job 1 - Point to the Change Happening in Your Audience’s World
A good business is based on ‘change.’
Change drives attention, and it also creates natural urgency, because as social animals, when there’s a change, we foresee problems, and we don’t want to get left behind. Change is linked to status.
There are two types of change, one is personal, and one is cultural.
Some friends of mine run Bulletproof for BJJ. Strength training for BJJ athletes. Now besides a brief chat early on about messaging, I have had nothing to do with these guys professionally. But I do want to do a full case study on this at some stage. Anyway, here’s the top of fold for the site:
“Be Prepared for BJJ.”
The change? You’re trying to advance in BJJ (individual).
Another example of this I’ve pointed out before was the RA MA website.
The change? The move into the technology age (cultural).
What is changing in your audience’s world that they can’t ignore?
Examples could include:
Opening a gym (career/business)
Their clients looking for new solutions (B2B) (wealth)
They are getting older (ageing)
They are entering a race (status)
They have a test coming up for the Fire Department (vocation)
They have just become a parent (parenting)
They want to have a kid (pregnancy)
Something has led to them deciding to get healthy or out of pain
There could be hundreds. These are just a few top level ones. We can feel what change does to our attention, if we just open up a news website. You’ll exclusively see (and feel) change.
Change isn’t just ‘change’ for the sake of it.
Change naturally creates a choice for the reader.
“What do I want to do here?”
This presents a fork in the road, and, if you’ve pointed to the right change, it will be a fork that’s impossible to ignore.
One path, is the old game, and the other, is the new game you can help them to play.
Job 2 - Show why the old game ain’t working anymore
And how some are now moving forward in the new game.
One mistake a lot of people make with this stuff, is to simply make a statement.
“The New Game is this: ________” And just use those words.
That can work, but hopefully you picked up why it often ain’t enough on its own. Because if we aren’t careful, it can just become a self serving claim.
This is because the story driven, or new game approach isn’t a tactic.
It’s a strategy or framework. So if we just use the words, or point it out without support, we’re ignored. What we need to do now is, show why the old game isn’t working (ideally, with proof), and how the people are winning moving forward.
This is a case of the ole’
“what got you here, ain’t going to get you to where you want to go now…”
Let’s go back to the Bulletproof for BJJ site:
“The majority of grapplers are stiff, sore, and under-performing. Truth is, they’re not sure how long they’ll be able to keep it up.”
Strong. Though it has a slight claim feel to it. Having said that, it’s more of an unspoken truth than a claim. I’m no expert, but pretty much every person I know who does BJJ seems to be constantly, often seriously, injured. So they’re more just making a point.
The reader should feel friction here. For the readers that agree with your change, this friction comes from the fact that they don’t want to be left behind, and this is important for them to pay attention to the next part of the story.
Job 3 - Describe the new game
A while back I had to go down to Melbourne to get my US passport renewed.
When I was in the passport office, up on the wall were a bunch of TV’s screening a travel advertisement to the states. They showed a bunch of different landscapes and cities, knowing that if you were there getting your passport, at least you were the right audience to advertise to.
This describes the ‘vision’ of what life can look like after the purchase.
Not what life looks like buying the service.
But what it enables us to do.
Often on a website, a business will start off with a big claim at the top.
Then quickly move into what the problem is and the solution that they have.
The issue with this can be we aren’t yet bought into the story. We get defensive, and look over the ‘breakdown’ of the offer with a blank stare.
But when we start off by pointing out the change, and raising the stakes, we are suddenly interested. We are hooked into the story, and we are curious as to what it can look like. This creates vision of taking positive action, whether or not it is with this business.
In Creator Club, we’re all about service businesses that thrive in the trust economy. Through using a story driven framework. So here, we describe what that looks like, and what life looks like as a Creator. In fact, now we dedicate a whole page to ‘Meet the Creators’.
Job 4 - Point to content
When a business is story driven, it means they’re driven by the story of the business, literally. Meaning the change they want to make is more important than anything else, and, the revenue they get from selling the offer or product is a result of that.
Thus, tapping into two of the universal laws of human nature:
‘Whoever needs it the least, wins,’ and ‘always lead with generosity.’
By not focusing firstly on the sale, they occur to us as less needy. And by generously creating content, they are always providing helpful goodwill for those who want to play the new game.
This gives us some radical insights into the type of content that we would expect:
How to win the new game (tips and strategies)
Stories of players winning the game
Reiterating the importance of the change happening
Some businesses will have more here. Some less. Some more entertainment focused. Some more educational. Each business is different in terms of what this content looks like. For us, it’s articles, podcasts and books. On the Bulletproof for BJJ page, it’s podcasts and articles. On the Red Bull site it’s customer success stories.
Either way, this is where any ‘asset building’ long form content would sit.
All of this making the site is not purely a sales funnel to the offer, but a gateway to your unique world and biz-ness story.
Job 5 - Present paid offer with success stories, and tell ‘em what to do to buy
The direct response DNA. One of the purposes of business is to create customers.
So, you want to have a clear way for people to work with you, or buy from you.
Each business is different, but this could be:
A phone number to call
A contact form on the site
An email address
Something to download
This will lead to the ‘next step’ in the sales process, whatever that is.
And the success stories?
These are key content pieces that help your audience to see that although you didn’t make any big promises or claims, your offer delivers the results. These are important on a website, because no matter how compelling your social media or podcast are, the buying happens on the site, and the success stories help to sooth necessary concerns that arise before purchase.
Back in the olden days of business, you would just hang up a sign on a shop front to say you are open for business, and wait for word to spread.
Some people think of a website this way.
An announcement, or a place for people to ‘find’ you, which would mean ‘make it very pretty’ and creative.
Others see it as part of the funnel, giving the visitor very few options, other than to buy.
While we are of course looking at a site that’s optimised for sales, looking at it from a story driven perspective means slowing the buying cycle down, not speeding it up.
Giving the visitor more time in your world.
In effect, this is because we are selling the story before the offer. We are marketing the story, before the offer.
A good website can be a strong, central ‘hub’ for your business story, and clearly articulates the change that is relevant to your client, and how you help them navigate that change, through content, and through your service.
Bringing out the characters in your business
“Let’s step into character” - Jules, Pulp Fiction
Let’s start with a bit of drama. I can tell you a bit of behind the scenes, as someone who enjoys writing, that there’s disagreement with this ‘personality in writing’ stuff. Some don’t like it.
Others do.
And there are various reasons, I suppose. But at the end of the day, the question is…
Should we bring out ‘character’ in business?
I’m obviously biased towards character and personality in business, so we can’t trust my answer. So here’s another question:
Where does your relationship with a business or creator lie?
If the relationship you have with the business lies in the information, character is less important. Getting your drivers licence renewed, et cetera. Something we have to do. But if the relationship lies in something deeper, such as brand, how the product or information makes you feel, well, then we need to look at character.
If you’re in a service, hospitality or even product business, you hopefully point to the latter.
And, well, if you think it’s just about information or product, then you probably aren’t reading any of my stuff anyway, because you wouldn’t believe in a storified view of the world.
So if there’s something in ‘brand’, and how a business makes you feel through what it does, then the question is, what really drives the brand?
Some will say the colours or the logos. And even the font.
But those are just signals of something deeper.
But if we look deeper, will see that it’s the story.
The colours, logos, and fonts simply try to represent the story. This is why you see so many businesses that get a brand ‘package’ start to freeze after a while. Because it’s deeper than that.
What drives the story?
“Structure and character are interlocked. The event structure of a story is created out of the choices that characters make under pressure and the actions they choose to take, while characters are the creatures who are revealed and changed by how they choose to act under pressure. If you change one, you change the other.” - Robert McKee
While we often ‘think’ it’s the coffee that we go back for, it’s usually how going to the cafe, or buying the beans makes us feel.
The deeper root of that brand, ain’t just the coffee beans, but the people, what they do, and our relationship with them.
What about boring companies?
When I was younger, I worked as an engineer for Boeing. It was my second to last corporate job, and at this point the pain had already set in, even though I didn’t have any kind of direction on what was next.
Anyway, this was the most ‘straight’ job you could have. Wear a certain uniform. Sit along a long row of desks. And when you go outside, because it was on an Air Force base, you had to walk between the painted lines. No photos et cetera.
Very strict.
But, every few days in the office, it was someone’s birthday. And when that happened they had to bring in a cake.
When the cake came out, people let loose.
Crass jokes, watercooler stories and unmentionables that aren’t a fit for an article.
When I think back to that time, I remember the work, but mostly, I remember the people. I can still see their face and what they stood for, because they were the characters in the story. And in a sense, the people were the brand.
Is it just me?
The other night I spoke with a group of cleaning businesses. I asked them in the chat who their favourite character was from any film or TV.
Cruella, The Joker, a few others popped up.
A whole bunch of people put Beth Dutton from Yellowstone.
They liked how she was flawed. And basically said that she made the whole series.
I gave an example of one of the cleaning companies that I had seen online. In a few seconds, I could give ten different points about this person’s character, her struggles, her values, her backstory, and what she stood for.
The people in the chat agreed.
And the business I spoke about does particularly well.
Sometimes there are instances where a business has such a huge, pre-existing brand that there’s no need for any compelling characters. These companies have customer service procedures, outsourced call centres, or chat bots.
These are not only the exception rather than the rule, but they ain’t typically the kinds of businesses you and I want to build. Plus, even a lot of these businesses are shifting.
In service businesses, brand is less about following the guidelines and the filters on the photos. It’s whether or not the characters in the world act in alignment with core values, and have a personality we can relate to.
When we look at a thriving service (and often, hospitality) business, we usually see a compelling character or team driving the mission forward. We have a strong relationship with all of that.
And there are a lot of factors, but when you look at a struggling business, you will often see a lack of a compelling character driving the mission forward. It can feel like a vacuum, or ‘flat.’
How do we bring out the character?
A lot of brand people will tell us that we need to be known, liked and trusted. While I think this is true, I find this slogan can lead to a flat character that is trying too hard to be ‘likeable’. Meaning, we strip away quirks, conflict or struggle, which deletes any hope of an interesting story or relationship.
Another way to look at it is to be ‘connected and respected.’
Respected for our skillset or service, and connected through our humanity.
Connection still requires trust. But this flip can get us thinking about how to bring out a real person with depth, rather that just a photo that could easily be a stock image.
At the risk of going too far here for the purposes of business, another thing we can think about is the concept of struggle, or pressure. When we think about Beth Dutton, her character is routinely exposed to deeper and deeper levels of pressure or struggle. Our relationship with her character deepens not because of her hair or accent. But because we see how she acts in these times of struggle.
So in a sense, we bring out the character by showing how the character does what they do, particularly when they’re under pressure. We have a story, and brand.
This gets back to what McKee was talking about earlier. The character and structure (or mission of your business) are interlinked.
When the character never has struggle, we end up focusing too much on ‘characterisation’, and not character. We get caught up in what they look like, or how they dress. Because there’s nothing else to grab on to. This creates a flat character.
In a sense, in the world of ‘personal brand’, bringing out the obstacles we face and the struggles we have overcome can be one of the strongest things we can do.
OK, enough theory. Let’s look at a few practical examples of how you can do this.
Example One
A little risk of being self-centred here. But if you’ve gotten to this point, you’ve put up with the crotchety emails of yours truly for a while. Or maybe you just landed here by accident. I don’t know. But either way, the final check I have with any writing, is to make sure there’s personality in it.
Like a ‘fact check’ but a ‘personality check.’
I’m so far on the other side of the whole AI thing, because it’s never my goal to be a reductionist that distills things down to the minimum, because that’s not how things are communicated. Nobody remembers what they read in the Encyclopaedia Britanica. To me, personality is a sign of health, and is really part of how we interact with each other.
Even in these articles, you already know where I worked, people I’ve worked with, views and opinions, et cetera.
So that’s your first option, is to learn to write with personality in your newsletter. Tell stories et cetera.
Example Two:
Valkyrie Gym about page. Hugo and team do a great job on social media with character, but for some people, social media can be a little much to start. In those cases, I suggest starting with the about page. At least give us a little humanity around the people that we’re going to be working with when we come in, right?
Anyway, on the about page, see how they have given some weaknesses, strengths, et cetera. Not only that, but with the GIF you get a little more context of how they move and what they do. They are loaded with personality.
Now this could be a bit strong for a lot of businesses. But you can pare it down. Either way, there’s a sense of a team, and they haven’t only focused on the qualifications and how ‘perfect’ the characters are, as if it’s some random LinkedIN post.
On social media, they also do a great job of bringing out the character of their clients as well. We’ll go more into customer success stories another time.
Example Three:
LORDS coffee is around the corner from me, and is a family owned and operated biz-ness headed up my friend Brownie AKA Mullet Lord and his wife Nicola.
This is probably worth a much bigger case study, because what we really see is a business story that originally kicked off from Brownie’s backstory overcoming some big struggles in life (You can listen here), and then valuing freedom and self expression.
So when you land on the site this is the ‘feeling’ that you get, and reflects the brand well.
Anyway, the cool thing that they do is story driven content on social media. And by that I mean literal short stories.
Ultimately, when you can tell a real story, you bring out the character at a deeper level, without having to tell us anything about them. Instead, it is shown in how they do what they do.
This is effective, but can be a big task if you’re starting out.
(Start by ‘wrapping’ regular content with a little bit of character, see the positive feedback, and ease into it that way.)
Summary
There’s a cliched line in marketing and business coaching that people do business with people. Problem with that is it isn’t too instructional.
When we look at what makes a compelling character in any story, we can see simple ways to do this in our businesses.
This doesn’t mean the business is ‘about us’. The service is priority, the change we make is key. However it does mean we can’t afford to have a flat business that is impossible to relate to.
For some businesses, this might go to level ten.
For others, it can be simply bringing out enough character for people to understand who you are, and how you do what you do.
We live in a world where quality of service is a prerequisite, but character and personality is a requirement.
Finding engaging stories for content and delivery
Yesterday I was talking with a guy who’s building a ‘suite’ of offers in the breath work-personal development space. In particular he’s working with A-players… High performers who are also biz-ness minded. Anyway, he’s doing a workshop in the next two months.
He brought up the age old problem of what to talk about at the start?
Turns out, a previous mentor had told him to start each workshop with a personal story, to build trust. Something about yourself. So that people get to know your struggles, or why you do what you do.
Makes sense.
We all know that telling stories at the front of a workshop, class, or even email can be helpful. But the problem he touched on, is that you run out of backstory, and, it ain’t that exciting to get up and talk about yourself directly.
In a lot of the articles, podcasts, et cetera, one thing I’ve yapped on about is how the character in a story is defined not by what they say, but how they do what they do. How they overcome struggles. Or their point of view on things. Or even what they stand for. Ideally, demonstrated through action.
One example I give a lot is how Tarantino will write twenty plus pages of ‘scrap’ dialogue between characters, just to get to ‘know’ them. To learn how they speak. To understand how they do what they do. Then he throws that out. It’s purely to define the characters for his own sake with the rest of the film.
Anyway, all of this is to say that when you relay any story, about something you saw, or something that happened, you are further defining your character. It doesn’t need to be backstory.
How do you find the stories?
Yesterday I was at the track - I’ve hired a coach for sprinting - and the coach brought her son along. I’d say he’s seven or eight. And he asked me what I do for work. I told him we help businesses grow and make more money. I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He was skateboarding, so I thought he might say an athlete, or something.
“Well, I’m already in business…”
I asked him what was the nature of his biz-ness?
“I find valuable things - I sharpen sticks for adventure games. I find balls and repair them… I fix up skateboards. I store them all in my locker at school. Then I rent them out to kids at $2 per day. There are other kids who have tried to open up businesses. One kid tries to rent out bicycles to the younger kids who are like, in preschool almost. But they can’t ride. It’s not a good business. And the teachers try to shut all of us down… They’re like the government (his words, lol). But we just tell them that it’s a game. And they can’t stop us from playing. I make around $39 dollars per day. It’s a lot of money.”
The kid was a hustling better than a lot of adults I know.
Anyway, I shared this story with the breathwork guy. And pointed out that the only reason I remembered it, was because it made me pay attention.
And the thing that made me pay attention?
Change, and conflict.
Sure, it was interesting that he was renting out sharpened sticks. But as soon as he said that there were other kids trying to hustle as well, and that the teachers were trying to shut the whole thing down, I was much more engaged. And couldn’t help but pay attention.
All I had to do then, is remember the story.
The Law of Conflict
We’ve covered before that the driver for almost all attention is not a ‘problem’, but ‘change.’ And specifically, the conflict, or potential conflict that ‘change’ creates. Conflict within ourselves. Conflict with others. The change and conflict cycle runs the entire news and media show.
When the kid talked about how they are going against the teachers to keep their enterprises running, that’s when the heart of the story and engagement appeared.
McKee teaches us about this in his book ’Story’.
“When the protagonist steps out of the inciting incident, he enters a world governed by the Law of Conflict. To wit: Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict.”
“Put another way, conflict is to storytelling what sound is to music. Both story and music are temporal arts, and the single most difficult task of the temporal artist is to hook our interest, hold our uninterrupted concentration, then carry us through time without an awareness of the passage of time.”
Conflict can be about status shifts, implied conflict, arguments, and suspense, which is really looming conflict on the horizon, such as a ticking clock, or an enemy moving closer to the protagonist.
Anyway, all of this is to say the thing we are looking for, is moments of change, tension, surprise, or conflict.
Once we can see the drivers for a story, we can start to collect them
It’s easy to look at great speakers or storytellers and think that somehow they just get this stuff. It just kind of pours out of them. And the better they are, the more natural it is, and the more gifted they must be.
Truth is, one of the key jobs of the compelling orator, or business person, is to build an arsenal of stories or parables.
This ain’t accidental. It’s something that we do on purpose, and work at daily.
People talk about ‘emptying the mind’. Well, if you want to have more compelling stories in delivery and content, it’s much more about expanding the mind. Adding more to it. Find things you’re interested in. Go out and create new experiences outside of social media, and bank stories from those experiences. ‘Filling the mind’ with experiences and stories is part of the job.
In saying that, there are three steps we can do to find more stories.
And I’ll get through this quickly. But basically, the more we practice these three, the better we get.
Step 1: ‘See’ a story, noticing conflict, change or curiosity.
Step 2: Log the story into a notebook or file
Step 3: Dress up the story
Step One - ‘See’ the Stories
A lot of people have written about this stuff at a much deeper level. Austin Kleon’s ‘Steal like an Artist’ is a helpful book. Draw on other people’s work, et cetera.
But this isn’t new.
Eugene Schwartz famously said, “You are not God, you don’t create anything from scratch. Instead, you ‘connect’ existing ideas in new ways” - I paraphrased the crap out of that.
John Cleese: “We don’t know where good ideas come from, but we know that it’s not from our laptop screen”.
It’s all the same message.
Get out there, consume the work of others. Interact with the world, and, you’ll have a constant source for your stories.
For me, I like to spearfish, train et cetera. So I regularly have stories about diving, sharks, whales. Whatever. So I’m constantly pounding out stories around that stuff. Then I have a dog who happens to have a lot of character. So I have stories about her. Then of course I’m working with a lot of unique business owners at any time, and I found early on that the stories that come from within your work are naturally going to be more valuable for your work because there’s already a lot of resonance there.
And in each case, first thing we’re doing is looking for things that make us pay attention.
And this is the great ‘gift’ (actually just a skillset that we develop) of the storyteller. It ain’t just the ‘telling’ of the story. It’s the ability to notice the event, and not just engage with it in real time. But ‘see’ it as fodder for the next email.
Soon you start to ‘see’ the stories more easily in the world around you. Just by practicing.
In short. If something makes you pay attention, or takes you by surprise. It’s probably going to take someone else by surprise as well, and is likely a good starting point for a story.
Step Two - Collect the Stories
One author that’s wildly prolific is Stephen King. I’m not a huge fan, but the way he comes up with stories is interesting. He just ‘starts’ with a scene, and then apparently, ‘sees where it’s going to go’.
So for example, I’m sitting at a desk right now. So you start with that. “He was sitting at the desk…” then you make something happen… “BANG, there was a loud noise down the street.” Maybe the guy ignores it, and keeps working…. “Then a soft knocking on the door….” And you just kind of evolve the story.
But if you think about it, that’s only really going to work in the world of fiction.
For us, we straddle business (non fiction) and entertainment. So instead of creating stories, we ‘collect’ stories.
And personally I don’t think this part gets enough attention. But how are you going to remember all the stories? You aren’t. So you create some kind of swipe file.
I heard - and I think it was from Dan Kennedy - about the idea of a ‘potato box’. It was either Kennedy, or one of his mentors, they had a big cardboard box for potatoes, and used this to throw newspaper clippings, articles, anything that was fodder for stories.
You need your potato box.
For me, my potato box is really just the ‘notes’ program on my computer. Sometimes I’ll even email the ideas to myself.
Plus a bunch of diaries. I’ve probably gone through ten or fifteen diaries. This ain’t any thing special. There’s no dumping stream of consciousness, or deep journal entries. Nothing wrong with that. But these diaries are really just for collecting the kernels of what happened. A few notes that help to remember the story: Who was involved, what happened, what were some specific points that stood out?
Once we have the stories, we get to dress them up…
Step Three - Dressing Up the Story
Before I sat down to write this, I saw a short video.
A yellow Nissan parked in a carpark next to a blue Toyota. The lady in the Nissan opened her door and it bumped the Toyota. The other woman saw it, and to retaliate, she opened her door into the Nissan, and put a bigger dent in it. Well, the whole thing escalated into a raging door slamming match. Soon, they were running their cars into each other in the carpark. Ramming each other. All the while, people in the carpark were just watching, holding onto their groceries. And the line under the video was “When you meet someone who matches your energy.”
In the skit, not only was there some conflict, but the story was ‘dressed up.’ The women were a little too enraged. The cars swiping at each other were a little too violent. It was ridiculous, but, still tied close enough to something we can imagine happening.
That story of the cars has no relevance to what we’re covering, but the message is in the medium.
I’ve long believed that, because we work with mediums that are ‘limited’, we have a creative license to dress up the stories.
What does that mean?
We need to add drama, to counterbalance the ‘flat-ness’ of media platforms.
If you and go through an actual experience together, maybe we’re out diving and something exciting happens. Then we both experience that ‘story’ at full definition. Then later, we ‘tell’ the story to someone else. Well, now it’s second hand. We ‘lose’ some of the experiential side of it. No matter how hard we try to be specific. From there, it just gets worse. Print media, videos, audio… Each time, we lose fidelity and depth.
This ain’t a bad thing.
And, it allows us to tell the stories en masse. But it means we need to practice the ‘telling’ of the story. And in that process, we can dress it up a little bit. Especially elements that create more conflict.
Point out the details. Make the character a little taller. Create tension with some pauses.
If you need some help with this idea, one place to look at is the news. The news ‘story formula’ is to point out a change, and then highlight the problem this may create, and in the process, either elevate, or just plain ‘create’ conflict.
Why? Because it sells.
So in ever story, we can bring out, dress up, or ‘highlight’ internal conflict for the character, or external conflict.
I asked the guy if he had any interesting things happen that week at work.
He said something came up with his admin staff, and that they needed to re-jig a bunch of systems to make the business run smoothly, because he could have lost this staff member.
And I pointed out that in his little story, there were two or three points of conflict.
It was engaging. Even entertaining.
He realised he had what he was looking for all along. Or as I like to say with this stuff, the diamonds are under your feet. We just need to practice finding them.
There’s a famous line by Tony Robbins, and this won’t be exactly right, but close:
“80% of my work is in entertainment. If I can do that well, then I might have a chance to deliver the 20% in education”.
And so it is with all of use in service businesses (and even some hospitality) when we work more directly with a client or customer. Only a small part of what we do is actually educating or giving direct value.
A lot of the other stuff is entertainment.
How we welcome someone in. The stories we tell from a stage or at the start of a class. The humour we can infuse into the end of the consultation. Or even how we can connect with small stories in emails or articles.
All of this is a key part of becoming a more engaging service provider, and building deeper relationships that help build a business well into the future.
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Attracting clients in the trust economy
I saw an article pop up ‘has the influencer bubble burst?’ Saying that the age of the influencer appears to be dying.
It talked about how last year a Philadelphia-based YouTuber had six figures worth of brand deals canceled in thirty days. He has half a million followers, and makes money on YouTube by telling other people how make money on YouTube...
“For influencers, brand deals have dried up in the past year. Most of my friends who were charging $30k per video are struggling to fill their sponsor slots for $10k.”
Well, on paper, still seems decent money to post a video?
But we have to remember that their whole brand is built off of upholding a lifestyle that’s more like $20k/month. Jets, houses. Whatever.
They went on to point to how the more relatable influencers doing better. Basically those with a bit more of a 3D, and less plastic personality. And then of course there’s the anti-influencer movement, where they tell you ‘not to buy.’ (Repulsion can be a form of attraction).
My take is that the influencer show will run on, with the key characters dropping off every 3-5 years with little harm. And those that last, will either be real people, or, 'bigger' influencers whose platform is actually created by institutions who prop them up despite a lack of either talent or quality product. The word 'influencer' ain't accidental. They’re telling you what they are. Their primary role is to be one link of persuasion in the money flow or narrative chain.
Anyway, all this alongside the obscene increase in scams we all get (via SMS, voicemail, email, Facebook marketplace to name a few), means the walls of the ‘whole thing may’ be cracking. Or at least shifting.
What does ‘the whole thing’ mean?
The trust walls are higher than ever. As faux influencers fall each week, people continue to wake up to the game that’s been played for the last ten years. Already, every email, post, website, and meeting ain't ‘looked at’ the way it was five years ago.
Even Price Waterhouse Coopers (who, do screw a lot of things up), got this one right in their consumer indexes - pointing to a 20%+ increase in the importance of ‘trust’ when buying, from 2020 to 2022.
Trust in all major bodies (media, social media, governments, biz-ness) has been plummeting for years. Up to 50% depending on your source.
The link between ‘trust’, media, and health and wellbeing went to a new level in 2020.
I just saw one study over in the U.S, that over 50% of the population doesn’t just ‘not trust’ the media. But they believe they are there to actively confuse the population. I’m just the messenger.
On the biz-ness side?
If correct, this would see a recalibration of what ‘good’ business looks like. And a shift in trust would look a lot like a ‘risk off’ environment. But it ain’t quite the same. Risk off means a move to cash or safe havens. That may be happening a little. But my feeling is that this is more of a reallocation of risk and a slower buying cycle. Meaning, some businesses are thriving at record highs (even in risk on industries), others are struggling to cut through.
Things rarely sell because they sound good on a singular instagram post. Or because they look good. They have to pass a gauntlet of tests that tap back into the basic human nature on how we build desire and trust over time.
Social media marketers are telling brands that they need to be more ‘human’.
They need to have their ‘values’ clear. But it’s deeper than that…
Who are the people behind the business? Is there a clear story pointing to a better future?
[We see this with both new, and bigger clients as we speak, especially in health, money, or support work. What does trust look like not just personally, but culturally in that space? Not just surface level, but behaviourally, and in marketing and sales.]
This ain’t complicated, but for sure it takes a bit more work with marketing.
A marketing plan for a bigger business we work with might now have components across video, written, and in person. And, in several cases, direct mail. While it may have been just YouTube and ads previously.
New businesses may have a dream of popping only on instagram, but our marketing model suggests picking at least two out of three between social, asset building (long form content), and live networking.
Even with simple, single channel marketing, having enough depth, and a clear story on what the business is about is key.
A lot of gurus talk about the attention economy.
Gary Vee, et cetera. These guys have obviously done very well and have been a linchpin in crafting part of the narrative (particular NFT’s, AI, et cetera).
But if we think in terms of ‘attention’ only, we end up chasing, rather than building trust or vision. I think of it more like a vision economy than an attention economy. We might notice the stimulus, but we won’t go deeper unless there are enough dominos lined up to create vision.
We’ve seen businesses go viral multiple times on short form platforms, with little to no business impact from that. I know of others through mutual contacts, with 1M+ followers, but no revenue.
Are the numbers real? In some cases yes. But still, attention is different from trust.
The fundamentals have been here since the start, but as a culture, we’re getting more sensitive.
More sensitive to the content, and to the platforms. There’s the cliché line that when you watch a little kid (I saw this again the other day), they can already swipe on the iPads at one or two years old. Our consciousness is getting more tuned to the digital age.
If you read the RA MA article, Guru Jagat used to speak of this sensitivity as well as part of the shift to the Technology Age. The big role of the meditation was to be able to clean the subconscious mind effectively, to deal with this stuff and stay sharp.
But all of that’s to say that by now, we all noticed the saturation of claims and false promises at some stage. So not much gets past the BS detector.
The good side?
A recalibration of what ‘good’ business looks like.
A long time ago when I owned the gym and started writing about health stuff, I used to love the work of Dr. Steven Porges. Particularly, his stuff on neuroception. Our natural human ability (at birth) to asses threats. Every time Ruby goes to see her niece, she tells me how she’s one of the few people the baby will smile at straight away. Babies are great at that. So are dogs. Anyway, back then I liked that stuff because if you want results at a gym, I figured you need to have a generally ‘positive’ perception of your environment.
Anyway, we’re just getting better at this in the online and business space.
We’re better at picking up cues throughout the whole buying journey as to whether we move forward with the purchase.
Anyway, in my limited, but I dare say accurate opinion, this is good.
But even if you see it as a negative because some of the old game ‘tactics’ ain’t working the same, as McKee teaches us, every negative in the story can set up a positive.
Example:
The NFT bubble has already set up a pendulum swing back to a small, but growing appreciation of real art that celebrates beauty and nature.
The AI copywriting swing is already putting the wheels in motion for those who appreciate and want to learn how to write well.
The fast talkers on Facebook ads are giving people a better understanding of what a calm nervous system looks like, from someone who isn’t after a quick buck.
(Side note, the music seems a little stuck in a loop since the 2000’s? But hopefully that comes back around as well…)
A whole new (old) set of skills are coming back into the forefront:
Writing. Speaking. And getting off the sidelines, to convey quality ideas and stories with others.
My guess? In that order.
Now you might say, “well that’s always been the case.” Sure. Even Dan Pink wrote about it in his pop classic, A Whole New Mind, and a shift to the conceptual age. As have many others. But most of these predictions were largely off the back of the information age, rather than a splintering of trust.
Anyway, this can all feel like ‘swimming upstream.’ It takes a little more effort to clarify the business story. More effort to do the marketing. More effort to learn how to sell in a clean way.
Still, savvy business owners are seeing that building sustainable, rewarding businesses over time ain’t just ‘possible’ but there’s actually a process.
Fundamental skills that have been around for decades. Just applied to media in a slightly different way.
The future is probably a little different, but the future is bright.
Three types of story driven content
The last place we talked about story driven content was in the Sézanne article. But even though that’s relevant, that’s a product biz-ness. So if you really want a bit more of a ‘primer’, have a read of the RA MA article. Guru Jagat really was a force.
But even with that breakdown, I had a nagging feeling that we should go into some specific types of content you can actually use. In fact we may even get into some detailed tactics. But we’ll see.
Those last articles went into case studies on story driven marketing. And, why it’s important. But if you got that already, or it’s too much to go back and read them, here’s a little refresh. Skip if needed.
A story driven business is built on a single, overarching narrative that involves the client (buyer) as the protagonist or hero. The story doesn’t start with a problem, but with a change. The business doesn't claim to be superior, it creates a more compelling story that we want to be a part of. The story doesn’t just drive marketing, but also business strategy, because it literally is the business.
Can you see how this type of business is more compelling in the noisy technology age we find ourselves in? You do? It’s the businesses we love to buy from.
Onward.
Now, the whole story driven thing ain’t new, of course.
Some businesses have been ‘story driven’ since the start. But when the internet hit full saturation and we all had safely exited myspace or whatever and people got onto Facebook and instagram and video was everywhere, we realised that instead of creating businesses of meaning, we could run ads of someone standing in front of a shwhite-board drawing things, and make bold claims.
Claims about the client’s problems.
Claims that we’re the best.
Kind of like a shifty car mechanic that adds on a bunch of things you need to replace before going through the whole thing properly.
The market exploded. The marketing technology landscape blew up with it.
Check out this image by Martech. If you can!
That’s the total number of marketing technology companies in 2023 (although it could be number of companies in any niche now). This is up 7,300% over eleven years.
No wonder it feels noisy.
Anyway, we all went along with the claims stuff. Until everyone was making claims. And it just became noise. And coupled with the 2020 global trust shift (which we’ll touch on shortly), we’re back to building businesses that have a clear purpose.
And that we resonate with and what to be a part of. And all in all, I think that’s a good thing.
So our three types of story driven content that we’ll cover here include:
Pointing out the change that’s happening (either internal or external), content on how to win the game, and, sharing client success stories. Let’s look at each one.
Content Type 1 - Pointing out the change that’s happening
In the RA MA article, I was yapping on about how effective Guru Jagat was in her messaging, almost purely through reiterating the ‘Change’ or the catalyst.
“We’re in a new trajectory on the planet. This is a new time with new challenges, requirements, and rules of engagement than even five years ago.”
“For the past 15 years I’ve watched the pressure of the Technology Age consume more and more of our fading attention span and vitality.”
She did this stuff almost daily. Not bad huh?
While there’s no specific ‘problem’ pointed out, it certainly creates a natural urgency, and leaves you thinking, well, what the hell do I do? I don’t want to get left behind.
That’s what real urgency looks like.
It isn’t built on exclamation marks or hype.
Now for us, in a lot of our content, we speak to the shift in the trust landscape. Here’s a post I grabbed from a while back on instagram:
“One thing that’s happening, is we’ve shifted as a culture on what ‘good’ looks like for business. Above everything, it’s ‘trust’… Can I trust you with my time? Can I trust your ethics? Can I trust that you’re doing good work? Trust has moved from this ‘abstract’ concept to a competitive advantage. Business are shifting from claims based ‘tick the box’ marketing for attention, to building much deeper trust and connection.”
In other areas, I talk a lot about the trust curve shifting.
Even Price Waterhouse Coopers, despite their slow-moving, often questionable nature, picked up on it in their consumer index:
“Since 2020, when trust became synonymous with health and safety, brand trust has figured prominently for consumers. This year, a remarkable 93% of them told us it is top of mind during holiday shopping, similar to last year’s 92% and a striking increase over the 70% we’ve recorded in the years prior to the pandemic.”
Now, you’re thinking that’s great for RA MA, or us, because there’s this big, broad, cultural change that we’re looking at, and we can all feel, right?
What about for individual businesses?
Or if you’re just serving people one to one?
Let’s look at something totally different, a hairdresser, for example
Well, we get a choice.
We can still look at an overarching change or catalyst, such as a change in trend to more natural hair colours.
Or the new information we have around how chemicals in certain shampoos or products affect your health.
Or,
We could focus on an individual change that’s happening in the internal world for your people. Such as you specialise in hair cuts for people right before their wedding day. So a big part of your marketing is focusing on the wedding, which is the catalyst of the story, how meaningful it is, and how it’s a time to be remembered and how winners have amazing hair. (There might be a trend in wedding hairstyles you can overlay on top of that. Bonus)
Another example
Maybe I’m a really disorganised guy. I’m not too bad really. But let’s say that I am. OK, well, that’s no big problem is it? So if you’re a life coach, hammering on the ‘you’re so disorganised’ isn’t really going to cut it. But if I am just starting a family… how about then? Or if I’m getting back into the dating scene, what about then? Maybe women don’t want a disorganised guy?
It’s the change that’s happening around me, that brings a problem into focus.
On a basic level, almost everyone can speak to the change of getting older, or the passing of time.
Time is running out. You’re ageing.
When we’re twenty-two, that doesn’t mean much. But when we’re sixty-two, it probably hits a little different. Heck, I’m thirty-eight and it’s different now to when I was twenty eight.
A final way you can tap into the power of change is to show your own change
So if you’re a strength coach, and you yourself are getting stronger, or coming back from injury, or learning a new skill, whatever. That change will capture attention. And this is great if you’re a really dynamic character, or you’re out doing a lot of different things that are exciting. The only thing is the client needs to see you as a relatable character so that they can see themselves in that same story. i.e, your ‘change’ needs to have resonance with it. (Yep, we’ll look at success stories later)
Why do people look at the weather report? Change.
Why do people check their phones? Change.
Why do people obsess over Hollywood celebrities and their dramatised lifestyles? Change.
Stagnation is boring. Stagnant problems are ignored. All animals, including humans, are wired to notice change. Problems can exist for a long time, but change captures our attention.
Content Type 2 - How to win on the new path
This taps into the “Garriott Sell the Game” principle that I’ve written about before.
Basically that’s where you are so passionate about the new path that you’re creating, and the change that you’re making, that you literally market, and sell the ‘game.’ You aren’t marketing your offers, or selling your offers so much. You’re selling the whole new ‘path’. And then your offer is the obvious choice, and it’s supported by your success stories.
This came from Richard Garriott, because once he built the Ultima online games, he was marketing the ‘game’, but then all these spin off offers became possible once a player was in the game.
But the main work is to market and sell the game.
So back to the RA MA example, let’s recap:
Old path: Asana yoga, lululemon pants, yoga pictures on the beach
Change: Rapid societal shift to the technology age, demanding lots more nervous system capacity. Old path no longer works.
New path: Kundalini yoga teaching brought to the west by Yogi Bhajan - meditation technology, et cetera
So marketing’ the new path, or ‘selling’ the new path, doesn’t mean selling the subscriptions to yoga. It means marketing the whole shift. Getting as many people on board with the new path as possible.
And one way we can do that, of course, is to help them win on the new path. Use content to give people the tools to move forward with your paradigm, or way of thinking.
In their case:
Free meditations. YouTube channel. Et cetera.
Let’s pause here for a sec. Can you see how this content would be boring, or even useless, if they didn’t spend a huge chunk of time and energy talking about the change, and why the new path was so important?
We needed to be ‘on board’ with the new path, before they could actually make us care about any of this stuff. And that’s where we can get stuck easily. A lot of people intuitively know they should be doing content et cetera. Where they trip up usually is they haven’t defined the old and new path and talked about the key change. So the content ends up patchy, or it’s flat.
And it feels like nobody cares.
All that is to say that with this second kind of content, you help people win.
I do articles, podcasts and books. You can do instagram content. Or live events. Whatever. If someone was on board with your new path, or the ‘story’ of your business and the future you’re trying to shape, what could you give them?
The side effect of this kind of content or experiences, is you start to build assets. I don’t even know how many articles or emails I’ve written now. It’s a lot. And I’m only just getting started. But all that isn’t because I’m trying to ‘create content’. It’s because the content is tools for people to move forward, in the new path that we see ahead.
The final thing is, I enjoy it. So I think you want to enjoy it if you can. Because that gives you a rhythm and it lights you up. And so it is, we get to creatively choose what we do.
Content Type 3 - Success Stories
Frankly. This could be the only type of content you do, and you could probably go pretty far. Because if you think about it, a strong success story of a client is going to encapsulate all three types of content, right?
They are very powerful.
Anyway, we’ll focus on just one part of the success story here, because mostly, everyone knows what a success story is.
The part we’re focusing on is from something I learned from the late Jim Camp. He was a negotiation trainer, who worked with counter-terrorism, FBI et cetera. And basically his approach was to ‘start with ‘no.’ That’s also the name of his book. But what that means is, you start with the negative.
In a negotation, that means you assume that it’s a no. Whereas everyone else goes into it assuming it’s a yes.
So straight away, you’re way less needy. But start with the negative is buillt on that. But it’s a little different. So let’s say I’m going to take my wife Ruby out for a nice dinner. But there’s a long wait time. Instead of ‘hey do you want to go to the best dinner in town, it’s amazing’, which comes off a little hypey, or needy, and it’s pretty easy to fail on that promise, I can say…
“Look, this may, or may not be true - but I’ve heard the food at this new place in town is exceptional. Now, there is a long wait time for the food to come out. Because they have to prepare it… But, I have heard that it’s worth it. It even was featured in the magazine. Do you want to go on Friday?”
And it’s an odd example, or whatever, but you start with the negative. Because that’s how we think. We weigh things up. Then, calmly describe what you’ve got.
So with the success stories, you want to start with the negative
The fear they had of starting with you. Or the problems that were starting to surface in their world. Start with the ugly part that most people hide away. They were afraid to spend the money. Or they didn’t have the time to commit… et cetera.
From there, dive into the steps they took, and the success that they’ve had, and what life looks like after the service.
I won’t go deeper here. Because this is a whole module that we teach on success story secrets.
But If you use success stories to show what life looks like after working with you (not what it looks like to work with you), you’re going to be showing (not telling) that you’re the best person to help your clients win on the new path that you’ve been talking about in all of your content.
These go great on a website, or on a prospectus, or information pack.
Trying to do ‘content first’ can be tricky. Because what the hell do you talk about, besides tips or making claims that your service is good? How would I know what article to write?
But if you look at it through a story-driven path, you see that the framework ‘gives you’ all of your content.
Or another way to put it. Content is only content ‘marketing’ to the extent that it tells the story of the business, and helps your clients move forward on your new path, to get to where they want to be.
Not only do you then capture your audience’s attention.
But you get quality attention.
And then you help them win, which builds trust, and finally you can easily show ‘em why you’re the best person to buy from, because they’re so deep in your world already.
Bringing out your character's ‘edge' for connection, engagement and sales
Your ‘backstory’ doesn’t help you grow your business directly.
But, it does help lock in some important things.
It gives us your values, motives, character traits… Things that can be ‘woven in’ to marketing in later stages. So it’s important for the founder to do.
One question I ask in the backstory work is “What are some of your pet peeves?”
I’m trying to figure out what pisses off the character.
What annoys them.
One guy said:
“Maybe it’s when I say something in a certain way that it’s not understood in the way that I meant it…”
Hmm. We’ll need more than that.
He wasn’t able to come up with anything tangible.
His ‘edge’ was vague.
And this, my friends, is the topic of today’s article
Revealing your character’s edge in your marketing.
Behind closed doors, among friends, or with family, we all have a pet peeve or an edge. Things irritate us. Or we avoid certain things. Or, we have weaknesses or flaws or obsessions that we work on.
But in the ‘marketing’ game, we often have negaphobia
‘The fear of bringing out anything that could cause negative emotion.’ Problem is, a completely positive (or neutral) character, business story, or marketing campaign isn’t natural.
It doesn’t resonate.
Stan Lee, who was the creator of Spiderman, talked about this in in an interview. And why Peter Parker was such a relatable character.
“He's become the most famous. He's the one who's most like me - nothing ever turns out 100 percent OK; he's got a lot of problems, and he does nothing wrong, and I can relate to that.”
Basically, he was a normal guy.
He was shy. Or not very social. Whatever. And so readers could suddenly relate to him on a whole new level.
Service businesses are ‘character driven businesses’
So if there are two services, and one provider is more relatable or magnetic, they will attract more clients, and work with them for longer.
We’re all looking to work with (and buy from) people that we can relate to. Or people that we respect and trust.
When you bring out your edge, you highlight your goodness as well. And when you work on this in marketing and deliver, it may - I’m not saying it will - but it certainly can help to - amplify your engagement in social media, and sales in emails.
Fear of the Edge
Why do we avoid the edge? Robert McKee talks about how this plays out in marketing, it’s called ‘negaohobia.’The fear of the negative. And it’s prolific in marketing and branding. Everything is so perfect. But that’s not the way that life is.
So in marketing, or with a business character, when there’s no edge, or it’s too perfect. It pushes us away. Marketers get stuck in this trap because they don’t want to be the ones to bring negative emotion to the brand (or personal brand), but they also see that without it, there’s no polarity or engagement.
There’s a house around the corner from me that won’t sell.
On the sign it says: “Perfectly renovated.” And has some new paint.
Now I’m not saying that’s stopping the sale, but nothing is perfect. It reeks of a cover-up job, and something is hidden.
Contrast that to a photo I saw of a T Bone steak.
“Humanely raised, but occasionally verbally abused”.
It’s a bit tongue in cheek. But that’s it, right? The farmer is looking after these cows, one steps on his foot or something, I don’t know, and he starts swearing at the cow. That’s how it really is. So that’s more trustworthy.
A compelling character doesn’t replace quality service
It amplifies it.
Bringing out your ‘edge’ won’t make your results better with clients.
But it makes you more trustworthy, because you are relatable. It’s not a gush of vulnerability. It’s just the removal of the masks that we tend to wear as business people, that helps you attract more clients and work with them for longer.
The three places we can start to bring out your character ‘edge’ include obstacles, pet peeves, and weaknesses or obsessions.
Step 1 - Obstacles the character faces
Imagine you watch an ad on TV. And it opens up with a scene of a happy family. There’s the parents, and the daughter Jane, and the son Billy. And they’re happy as Larry. Everyone is smiling.
It makes you smile.
Then that fades and it opens to the second scene, which is another even happier family. Wow! super happy. Everything is perfect.
That lasts for a few seconds.
You’re like “OK…” this is a bit weird. but whatever.
Third scene comes on.
Somehow. It’s an even happier family. In disgust, you throw your remote control at the TV, or you turn off Youtube or whatever you’re watching, and you never buy from that brand again.
Why? Because without a negative setup, every positive is cancelled out.
Every positive needs a negative setup
Or else it ain’t a positive. If there’s only positive in the lead up to more positive, it all gets cancelled.
So obstacles of some kind are important. And you can just bring that into your world with emails or whatever.
Obstacles like nearly losing a retail store. Or staff issues. Or whatever it is. Some of the biggest businesses I’ve worked with have gone bankrupt, or gotten down to the last ten dollars in their account, before rebuilding.
And those obstacles make great content today.
Step 2 - Pet peeves, or things you’re against
I was speaking to a business owner yesterday who’s building two websites at once. Not just one, but two at the same time, for two different businesses. And so he’s doing all kinds of writing and photos that he’s putting up.
Anyway he’s snowed under with all this work and he said that the thing that really helped him was to use ChatGPT. To write the copy.
And I don’t know if he knows my view on chat GPT or whatever.
But I think he did. So I told him I could never do that, but it was great for him because it was faster.
But Chat GPT is one of my pet peeves.
All these gurus that come onto the scene saying if you don’t do it, you’re screwed, they’re kind of in the pet peeve basket too.
Now a lot of people disagree with me. And you might disagree with me. And that’s OK. But that’s the point about pet peeves, or things that you’re against. People won’t always agree with you, but they’ll like the fact that you stand for something and that you have your feet firmly planted under you.
Flaws is another way to do it
A book I’m reading right now is all about Leonardo da Vinci.
And there were only a couple of works that da Vinci actually finished. And only a couple of portraits. One portrait that he did as an older man is called the Turin portrait. And he drew himself with this setup of three mirrors. And what he did was he didn’t skip over any wrinkle! He drew himself all weathered. And it’s very deep. Every time you reproduce it, you get a different emotion comet through, because it’s so deep.
And the contrast to that is a portrait that a student did. That’s side on. Profile. But because he was the student, he hid all the flaws, and made da Vinci look great.
Longer, straight nose. Thinner eyebrows. Better hairline. Better beard. But in the end the thing is, nobody really wanted that side profile. Everyone wanted the Turin portrait.
So the flaws are something that we want to bring out as well.
That we’re socially awkward. That we don’t trust crowds or whatever.
Not to dumb ourselves down for marketing or social media, but to remove the ‘perfection’ mask, or buffer, that blocks connection.
Step 3 - obsessions or weaknesses of the character
There was an interview with Sylvester Stallone, that you can find. I think it was zurich film festival. A lot of people don’t realise that he’s one of the few who have directed and acted in so many films.
But anyway, he was talking about compelling characters. And he said you have to be careful, if you make this superhero character, people completely switch off. And you get torched for it, as a director.
“Let me make it simple. When the character becomes stronger than the audience, you lose your audience. The character has to have as many problems as the people in the audience, then they can relate. Like here’s a guy. He’s tough, he’s world champion. But he’s scared. He’s still nervous. And I don’t care who you are, when you sit in front of a crowd, you get nervous. It’s that connection.”
“It’s very important to use the ten or fifteen identifiable things that we have in common: pride, ego, jealousy, false pride, fear, insecurity… That kind of thing is what makes the character absolutely relate to the audience. When I don’t do that, it’s a disaster. And I have done that before.”
And you bring that out, by wrapping it into your world or content, so people can identify with you.
We’re subconsciously looking for it, to connect with you.
It’s like the whole interview thing when you go for a job. The HR department runs the job interviews, and the whole point of them is to find the weaknesses or flaws of the candidates, because in the CV’s, nobody puts in their weaknesses. Then they ask in the interview, and the people say “My weakness is that I work to hard” or something. Which of course misses the point completely.
A lot of people talk about authenticity.
And it seems to have morphed into something where you’re supposed to share internal struggles, or find emotional moments to leverage in your life, to create vulnerability.
And maybe that’s it.
But to me, that can be a never-ending trap. And rather than fixate on the word ‘authentic’ (the root of the word is from authentes "one acting on one's own authority," which has little to do with how it’s often used), we can look at the word ‘natural.’
What are some of the natural ‘edges’ of the character?
Rather than being afraid these may repel people, what happens if you relax and let these out?
A lot of times, you’ll see engagement jump, as people finally have something they can relate to, that shows them you’re a real person.
Finding the right topics for your first five website articles
An interesting story from a designer, who’s breaking into the car scene.
He showed me a ‘builder’ in Australia who’s known for his unique cars. It turns out, that back in 2006, this guy started to document his first car build through a simple website.
And, each step of the way, he wrote an article about it.
Soon, the car community got hold of the story, and people flocked to watch it unfold.
Now he’s got a horde of fans a half-million strong on different platforms, and has created a full-time career doing the work he loves.
The entire process, driven by one article at a time.
Not from a writing expert, but a self-taught car guy.
I’ve had a similar thing happen
In December 2017, I started to write blog articles, that were sent out as emails.
This was while I owned a gym in Melbourne. So I was writing about my perspective on health, stress, training… Everything that kind of ‘surrounded’ the gym, but wasn’t the training itself.
Before I knew it, the emails started to get replies.
And soon turned into workshops about those topics.
I was a little surprised to be honest. It wasn’t 2006 anymore, the whole internet was crowded (more on that later).
Later, the blog posts also made up about 30% of my first book.
And to this day, writing blogs and articles has been one of the most powerful tools to help create positioning.
Why do articles work so well?
They don’t all work well. There are a lot of articles that are just words…
But, there are two types of articles that work very well and cut through the noise for a story-driven biz-ness. One is where you’re helping your customers, or ‘players’ win the game. This is giving them specific learnings, or tools to move forward on your new path. Or, in basic terms, you’re teaching them how to do things, or look at things the right way.
The other type that works well is celebrating players (clients, audience, peers) that are winning the game. I like to do these with case studies.
Both of these do two specific things:
They help your people win.
And, they aren’t self serving.
So while a traditional funnel clamps around your people, and reduces the possible places for them to go (buy, or don’t buy). Expanding your article bank increases the possible places for your people to go in your world (read more on this, or go over here to learn that… and, if you want guidance, you can buy).
This is much less needy, which is why the positioning power of articles is so strong.
But everyone can write articles…
Sure can. Especially now, as AI can spit them out in seconds.
But the increase in volume is mostly at the lower end. Most of the articles out there are ‘placeholders’. Trash that people put up to try and game SEO, or look smart.
With a little practice, you don’t just write an article that adds to the noise. You write an article that stands out.
And this is something different altogether. Something people click on, look forward to reading, and come back to, because it helps them win.
There are three ‘big’ areas to focus on
If you’ve ever tried surfing, you know it ain’t easy to learn. There’s the bit that you see - someone riding a wave. But that’s maybe 20% of what’s really going on. Then there’s the other 80% that’s hidden. And this is always the case with complex tasks like surfing (or writing).
And still, if you can master three things - positioning, paddling and standing up, you’re almost there.
You won’t be Kelly Slater, but you’ll be riding some kind of wave.
And it’s the same with writing. It’s complex stuff. As Hemingway said, 80% is unseen.
But still…
If you focus on the ‘big three’, then you’re going to be pretty far along. The big three for articles include topic, structure, and the all important, entertainment or drama
Here we’ll cover ‘Topic’
This seems simple, but it’s nuanced. Because the problem is, as the expert, you’re so close to the subject matter that it can be hard to know exactly what to write about, that can be helpful for your people. So if we just ‘put out’ articles, they tend to miss the mark.
So, what we’re going to do is, break it down into three parts: writing for your clients (not for you), being specific, and staying unique to your world.
We’ll work through these specifically. Then, you can write your first five articles for your website and start to position as an authority in your niche.
First, the Skeletons…
Let’s bring some ugly skeletons out of the closet. Because it ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. Writing is a blue-collar job. It takes effort, and time.
Here are the three struggles we all face with this:
You won’t see anything happen straight away. Even if you’re a bit obsessive, and pound out all five articles and publish them today, you won’t see a radical change in inbound phone calls tomorrow. This will come over time.
The articles take a while to write at first. For me, they are pretty fast. A couple hours. But that is after hundreds of the darn things. I recommend putting a timer on it, so you spend a little time each day. And then you’ll get faster over time.
There’s a cumulative effect for positioning, not a linear effect. This means that the more you write, the stronger your position as an expert. One article will do nothing for positioning. Ten does something. At 100, you have ‘mass’.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s dive in so you can start writing some articles and positioning like a service champion.
Step 1 - Find the Topics: ‘Write first for your clients, then for yourself’
Let’s go back to the surfing example.
In surfing, at a high level, there are two or three directions you can go. You can be a free surfer. You can be a big wave surfer. Or, you can be a competition surfer.
And of course there’s overlap. But a lot of free surfers and big wave surfers ain’t comp surfers.
Why?
There’s politics. There ain’t a lot of prize money for the most part. And there’s a lot of travel.
But most specifically, they’re surfing for a judge. And it creates a particular style of surfing, that some people don’t want to do.
In service businesses, we’re ‘surfing’ for a judge.
We are being judged by the people we want to help. Even if a few of us love to write, this isn’t fiction. So we gotta help ‘em. We put out articles for the clients. And this is our main North Star.
The article topics should stem from what your people need. Either by directly asking them, or, noticing the obstacles and behaviour of your customers.
And what about the ‘writing for yourself’ part?
Well that’s the benefit we get. The positioning comes as a result of the transformation that we make. It doesn’t come just from writing.
So this will help us to identify the topics for the first five articles.
The first task is to look in your messages and conversations for client obstacles.
In Creator Club, we use email, and a closed community platform that has posts and messages. And, there’s the calls as well. You’ll have your own platforms that you use. So if you start with your messages or emails, look through to find the obstacles or questions that people have.
Typically, the obstacles you find will be a little blurry or broad. Because people don’t tend to be perfectly specific with their questions, and they’re confused by the obstacle.
Example:
We used to own a gym, and sometimes if someone wasn’t training for a while, they might say “I’m a little burned out with work”. That’s certainly an obstacle. But it isn’t clear what that means.
It could be food, recovery, time off, training dosage et cetera. But at the moment, just write it down as it is.
If you don’t have messages with clients, or emails from them, then the next step is to talk to your clients and just listen to them. Make a mental note. Then when you’re done, go and write it down.
You’ll hear all kinds of things.
Example - one of my friends is a real estate agent. She said that one thing people talked about was the hassle of changing all the addresses for bills et cetera after buying the house. So she made a note, and sent an email out about that.
Try to accumulate ten obstacles that you’re hearing from your clients from messages or conversations.
Step 2 - Create Specificity by Drilling Down
“… A good story is in the details, the little things that most people don’t notice but enrich the entire presentation.”
- Richard Garriott
One of the things we can do to make our storytelling more powerful, is to create specific images with words.
Here’s an excerpt from Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” (1926)
“In the morning I walked down the Boulevard to the rue Soufflot for coffee and brioche. It was a fine morning. The horse-chestnut trees in the Luxembourg gardens were in bloom. There was the pleasant early-morning feeling of a hot day. I read the papers with the coffee and then smoked a cigarette. The flower-women were coming up from the market and arranging their daily stock. Students went by going up to the law school, or down to the Sorbonne. The Boulevard was busy with trams and people going to work.”
The specifics are what create the scene. And it’s processed much differently from just a series of events.
In other words, specifics create a more compelling story.
And the same is true for your articles. Your audience is reading the articles as they move through their own story in their lives. They’re dealing with specific ‘scenes’. Or obstacles that pop up. With your articles, you want to meet this level of specificity.
But the obstacles you got from the clients are pretty broad…
Exactly.
Break the obstacles down into chunks.
Let’s go back to the burned out gym person.
Well, we don’t know exactly the obstacle. It could be time management. Energy. Or, the training load.
So, you can either ask more questions (usually best by simply saying ‘interesting, tell me more about that…’ rather than trying to lead the question). Or, you can take a stab at it and outline specific obstacles that could lead to the burned out feeling.
Now, if it’s starting to feel like your articles are limited. And they ain’t solving a huge problem… Good.
They should be limited.
They should address an exclusive obstacle, that’s narrow, and demonstrates your understanding of the client’s world.
Solve for one action in the scene of the obstacle.
The overall scene is one of a burned out client. One action in that, might be how they eat, or organising the food for the week ahead, so there’s less to worry about, and they have more energy. Solve for that one action.
Another action might be setting up an evening routine for better sleep, to restore energy. Sovle for that one action with an article.
What we’re doing, is rather than looking at your client’s journey in these big sweeping strokes that make sense to you as a guide, we’re zooming in to look at the one thing that they’re dealing with, and showing them a solution for that.
Because once they have a small steps solution, they will move forward with the action, and feel confident to take another one.
And your article has done its job.
But it’s going to leave so many obstacles open…
Perfect.
Time to write another article topic.
You might have this one ‘burned out’ obstacle becoming your five topics:
Sunday food prep template so you have time and energy all week to train
How to regulate training so you ‘build’ instead of ‘burn’ your energy
Three ways to adapt your training when you have heavy work deadlines
3 Pre and post workout meal ideas to recover faster and feel fresh again
Winter endurance - how top athletes stay motivated in the colder months (it ain’t what you expect)
If we do this right, we can take a few major obstacles that the client has, and break them down into five specific topics.
Then a new obstacle will give you five more…
Step 3 - Unique to Your World
This isn’t one a lot of people talk about.
But if you think about your overall business story, it all takes place in a particular ‘world’. So for example, in my world, I don’t do a lot of video. So it wouldn’t make sense for me to write a big article about being confident on video, even if it felt like that might help solve a particular obstacle for the client.
Another example right now is the AI and ChatGPT thing.
I have peers that are yapping on about the best prompts. And how to win with that stuff. Personally, I think a lot of people are just chasing the shiny object. And I’m yet to see real good work come out of it. So I don’t write about that. I just leave it.
Same with Facebook ads.
Same with managing your tax.
Both can be important things for a service biz-ness. But they ain’t part of my world, which revolves around story-driven business and marketing. So, we leave them out.
In an interview I did with Janet Forbes, who’s the co-founder or World Anvil, an online world building platform with 2.5 million users, who describes this as sticking to your ‘Meta’
“You don't wanna build a mild wide and an inch deep. That is, that is not a good ‘world’ setting, but it's also not a good brand. You can't be everything to everyone. And so for me, that, that concept of meta is something that really applies to pretty much everything in my life, and I think a lot of stuff in, in business really extrapolated from that, which is choose what it is you're trying to do and then choose the focus points that you're going for.”
If you start to do all kinds of ‘general’ articles that are outside of your world, you’re going to blend in with the masses.
Focus on your world, and the story that you’re creating with your business, and only write articles for that.
This will start to describe your ‘system’
While we started out taking core obstacles that your client is facing, and boiling them down to small, specific steps we can help them with, we also have another opportunity here.
We are outlining parts of our system.
So even though these are just your first five articles, they should point to the general way that you do things, or your overarching system in your business.
And over time, this becomes an overarching asset that can help your clients win.
And helps you make money as a business through expert positioning.
Back when I got into strength training, the second guy I became obsessed with, was Louie Simmons, from Westside Barbell.
The first place I went to, was his website.
I spent hours gorging on his haphazardly written in Louie speak, but infinitely helpful articles, that outlined his conjugate training system.
Then I bought the book. And the training certification et cetera.
The point is, it started out with his articles. By my count, there’s over 1,000 of ‘em.
And while his articles were solving specific problems or obstacles, they were also outlining a much larger system that I was learning at the same time.
And so it is in Creator Club.
Here, for example, we’re talking about how to find the topics for your first five articles. Well, that’s a key part of our system, which is setting up your weekly long form marketing, or asset building.
Summary
The first step to writing articles, is the ability to find topics that are relevant.
And while that sounds easy, I know what this is like. I’ve written hundreds of articles, and a TON of the early ones were just made up topics. And sometimes they hit the mark. But a lot of times, they missed completely.
It’s much better to have a system for finding your topics.
The first step, is to write for your clients - listen to the obstacles or challenges they’re facing.
The second step, was to turn that into specifics. We went through one example. But the idea is the topics want to ‘feel’ almost too small. They’re helping your clients win in one little step, rather than a huge leap (which they couldn’t implement anyway).
The final step, is to stay unique to your world and system. This guarantees that you keep building brand and positioning around a core area of expertise. And it also helps the reader build a deeper relationship with you.
Want help with your copywriting?
Download 18 Point Copywriting Guide for some simple tips to help
Three signs you may have a business identity crisis
The other week, a business owner told me how things have changed since working on their ‘story.’
This is a community gym who’s grown significantly. One thing she said caught my eye:
“When we started, our business was in an identity crisis. Cash flow was tight. At the time of signing up my partner and I had a 5 month old baby…. Having an expert guiding us on what was the most important aspect to work on first, giving us simple tasks and reminding us what we were already doing really well, helped more than we could have imagined. Our business became focussed, we re-established our identity…”
Here’s the cool part:
“…And we became confident in who we were and what we had to offer again. And Confidence is infectious.”
While it’s nice for me to hear all that stuff, the thing that stuck out to me was the term “identity crisis.”
I decided to steal it!
An identity crisis (could also be called a narrative crisis), is when the biz is clear on their ‘niche...’
They have their persona.
They know their ‘people’.
They know how they help them.
And they know they help them in a way that’s ‘deeper’ than the surface level transformation of that industry.
And yet…
They still feel lost, marketing isn’t working well, and they find themselves looking at other businesses on social media.
In the work we do, we tend to attract more ‘unique’ businesses. And with a more unique business, when this kind of crisis pops up, it can seem even worse because the owner doesn’t think anyone will understand them.
Which is fair enough, because, they’re unique after all.
So you get this internal crisis, combined with doubt that anyone can help, or there’s anything anyone can do... And it’s crippling.
And the worst part is, you can limp along like this, for a while, which strings out the frustration over time.
Anyway, the first step is to understand this crisis, so we can try to get past it.
In the RA MA article, I talked about what may be the best story driven marketing I’ve seen.
And how a story driven business is very different from a claims based business.
In a claims based business, the owner looks to sell their offer as the main priority, and does this through making claims that they’re the best, before clamping around the prospect with various funnels.
With a story driven business, their main focal point is a broader change that they are making in the culture.
A change that’s relevant because there’s been a shift in the buyer’s world.
That shift is called the catalyst, and their offer is simply a key stepping stone for this change to happen.
A business identity crisis happens when a story-minded business owner, ain’t clear on their story.
They ‘want’ to be story driven.
But they’re confused on the narrative.
So filling out a niche sheet, or client profile, is easy. But, it doesn’t help with the confusion, which often spreads throughout the team and into marketing. It’s especially obvious when you have multiple CEO’s or co-founders and you put them into different rooms, they try to explain the story of the biz and you get different answers.
And when the crisis rears it’s head, you can try to ramp up outbound marketing or sales, but it never feels like there’s a strong momentum, or that the buyer doesn’t trust the business.
(From the customer’s perspective, there’s no compelling story that can build trust.)
Just because there’s uncertainty, doesn’t mean there’s a crisis…
Even in with a clear business, uncertainty can still pop up sometimes. That can be normal.
So, here are three other signs, that hint that an identity crisis may have implanted itself at the root of the biz-ness. And that the overall narrative needs to be addressed to restore buyer trust.
Sign 1 - Watching other businesses for direction
In a claims-based business, positioning is built comparatively. So this means using price, location, speed, or some other attribute (usually shown on an x/y axis) to outperform other businesses, and then claim that performance. This means it makes sense to spend time on other business websites, and try to see where everyone is sitting, so that you can over-index on your point of difference.
In a story-driven business, we focus on ‘absolute’ positioning. This means we’re creating a movement (even if it is small), and don’t want to really look at what others are doing. We literally avoid comparison based positioning, and focus that energy on helping the clients to win in this new story we’re creating.
Example:
On the Fitness First website, the first thing we see is “Start Today and Get up to 15% off”.
This is price driven positioning.
The first thing they want you to see, is that it’s likely cheaper.
On the Anytime Fitness page, they’re showing how the game has changed, and you don’t need to follow the old rules of fitness anymore.
This is story driven positioning.
Sign 2 - The CEO(s) looking to staff, or customers to clarify the story
There’s an audio clip from the Howard Stern show (worth ~$500M), where a caller, Evan, rings up to give feedback.
“Hey Howard, how’s it going? I want to give constructive criticism on your show.”
“Not necessary.” Stern replies.
“What’s that?”
“Not necessary.”
“But you need feedback” stammers Evan.
"No. I figure out what to do, by me. I’m in charge of me, and I’m in charge of my show. What do I need feedback for?"
"Because your show is a community" says Evan.
"If I thought of the show as a community, I’d be doomed."
"Evan. Your feedback is irrelevant."
"How dare you?" Evan's getting fired up now.
"I’m telling you my process Evan."
"But I’m a paying customer!" Evan yells.
"I don’t care. Quit."
"I don’t care what you think. I care what I think"
"The way that I was an innovator was to IGNORE the feedback!" Howard continues
"Call Ryan Seacrest, he probably listens to feedback... He worries about what people think of him… A show that everyone loves is hardly my show."
“Most people don’t like my show.”
Evan swears at Howard and hangs up.
Stern takes it to the extreme.
But fact is, if you’re getting input on the overarching narrative of the business (why you exist, why now, and the future you want to create) from staff, customers, and everyone else, then it’s very difficult to have a core, singular narrative.
Note: This doesn’t mean we don’t do customer or client research.
Research on the client’s world helps us to clarify the story. But this observation happens in a research phase, not asking on an ongoing basis.
More: Customer or client feedback is great for shaping offers (stepping stones for the client to move forward in the story), but not shaping the narrative. That’s the founder or CEO’s job.
Sign 3 - Marketing is start-stop, or very difficult
"Good marketing tells the story, great marketing is the story"
- Bernadette Jiwa
Content marketing then, falls into three categories:
1 - Updates on the characters in the world and documenting the story (to build trust)
2 - Helping the audience move forward on the new path (with or without the offer)
3 - Celebrating wins of clients (or non-clients) who are winning on the new path (i.e. they’re helping drive the story)
Basically, you’re marketing should attract more people to the overarching story.
And this means it’s pretty simple, once the narrative is clear.
So, if marketing (content marketing, networking, projects, asset building) feels really draining, it’s a sign that when we go to do it, we don’t have a guiding business story, and we’re relying on thinking in the moment.
What does ‘easy’ marketing look like?
I met with a business owner last week. We had fleshed out their business story in recent months.
“I’m wondering what to do this month for marketing, I’m understaffed, and short on time…”
We went back through his overarching story.
And pointed to the fact that his sales have been best when he’s leaned heavily on that story in the past.
And destroyed any over-thinking about it all.
Once we were done I told him he shouldn’t be asking me about marketing, because he knows the story, and know what performs.
He agreed.
Typically, it takes him a minute or two to film a video and post it for marketing. They don’t do edits. They don’t do scripts. They don’t need to, because the story is clear.
If you’ve come through the internet marketing world, you may have been indoctrinated to think that any hurdle you have is a niche hurdle. Or a messaging hurdle.
And if you make it through that, you may have been told it’s an ‘effort’ hurdle.
Sometimes that’s the case. But a lot of times, the feeling of the ‘identity crisis’ is around the narrative, or business story.
When this happens, the owner, CEO or staff can get frustrated doing more and more niche work, or working harder on outbound sales or marketing, when really it’s about clearing up the narrative, or story.
When everyone in the biz knows what the business is doing, or the story that drives the business, and how their niche, or persona, fits into the story, it creates confidence.
There’s no need to watch other businesses, marketing is simple, and there’s no need to ask the customers or clients to steer the business direction.
There’s one unifying message that acts as a north star not just in marketing, but business strategy and decisions.
Clarity creates confidence, and, as we heard at the start, confidence is infectious.
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Switching to a story-driven business (global gym case study)
There’s a reason most of us in small business bailed on corporate. We don’t like blindly following rules. I was talking to an architect:
“I’m lucky I get to change my work each day…” he said.
“I would never survive doing the same thing over and over”
No doubt. Small business owners are creative, and like to do things their way.
One side effects of this, is we can tend to shun big biz.
They started their business to upset the status quo… Which often leads to seeing ‘what’s wrong’ with bigger institutions.
I do this all the time.
But, truth is, there’s also lots to learn over the decades from some bigger businesses.
And once in a while, a big biz-ness wisens up, and shifts their messaging
From an archaic institution, to a story-driven business…
One example of this, is Anytime Fitness.
I noticed this because a friend had recently bought into a franchise.
Anytime is a global fitness chain.
Now, it has over 600,000 members. That’s a ‘big box’ globo gym. Most small gyms or studios hate these kind of places.
But, in late 2022, Anytime saw record numbers of Australians joining their network.
So, the customer is buying.
But this wasn’t always the case…
Here, we’ll break down how the switch to a story driven business happened.
And, how even for big business, adopting a story-driven model is possible, and can help build a bigger horde of fans…
We’ll look at three points in the business messaging:
The strength of a main story (a ‘catalyst’ or change, the old path, new path, and opportunity for the client)
How to win on the new path, or in the new story you’re creating
Success stories, to prove that the new path (then your offer) helps people win.
And when we compare these for the old version of Anytime Fitness, with the new version, we see a solid example of a ‘switch’.
Note: We do this mostly through the website. While that’s not the only way to do it, if you can’t get the website ‘story’ clear, there ain’t much hope for anything else…
The Old Version…
We’re going back to March, 2018
Anytime Fitness has been around a lot longer than this.
And while going way back to 2009 was fun for me, it ain’t particularly relevant. Because a clear story didn’t really exist.
(The ‘O.G’ messaging was mostly about a ‘quick, low cost’ gym)
So the first version we’ll look at is in 2018. Let’s look at the three different points:
Part 1 - The ‘Strength’ of the Main Story
Here’s the main header:
“Be a part of the biggest fitness community in Australia” is an attempt at positioning as some kind of leader.
But it’s feeble.
Mainly because leading in number of members has little relevance for a gym client. (Leading in ‘results might be better).
So, there’s a ‘relative’ position.
But this lacks any story element at all:
There’s no catalyst or change, no conflict (old path vs. new). There’s no indication of what the world looks like, who the main character is (who it’s for), what success looks like, or any information about the guides…
The old version ain’t a story driven business, it’s just a message around ‘mass’. And does little to raise urgency or necessity for the buyer.
Moving down the website, the confusion continues…
“Epic is waiting” has no relevance to anything. What is epic? What is the outcome?
This is a ‘stand-in’ word, to try and elevate emotion.
But that does little for the buying cycle…
Overall, the strength of any ‘main story’ is close to zero.
Part 2 - How to ‘win’ on the new path, or in the new story
While the blog was there in the top navigation, there was little on how to win in the game of fitness.
The blog wasn’t advertised on the main site.
This is common with ‘claims based’ business (i.e. ‘we don’t need to build assets or educate because we think we’re the best’)
Part 3 - Success Stories
These are completely missing. Which is often the case when the story ain’t clear.
Stock photography was the default setting. And the visual story was random.
It’s not even clear if the people in the photos have anything to do with Anytime Fitness.
There are no specific success stories.
The New Anytime Fitness - The Switch to A Story Driven Business
Here’s the new top of fold for the site. Straight away we can see a difference…
By 2022, Anytime Fitness had switched to a message around “Any Body, Any Time”
This was across their website and content at a franchise level.
Same as before, let’s look at the three key questions to see if there’s a story-driven business underneath.
Part 1 - The ‘Strength’ of the Main Story
We can look at this from three points.
These were all missing in the previous version…
The change or ‘catalyst’ in the culture. This is needed in any story-driven business.
And in this case: the customer now makes the rules on what fitness looks like
This shift that happened around 2020 was around trust, and choice. All of a sudden, businesses saw that the customer could choose who to buy from, and had 100% of the buying power. More, that it was no longer about businesses ‘forcing’ a particular way of doing things onto the customer.
We saw this with Apple allowing customers more control with advertising settings on their phone.
Uber eats and the explosion of ‘get what you want, when you want’…
And the saturation of smaller gyms, yoga studios, coaches… All offering different ways of serving.
In this case, Anytime didn’t point out this change exactly.
Partly because they didn’t need to…
The main thing is they created a ‘head nod’ statement around the change, that their target customer agrees with.
Here we go, right at the top of the site:
Anyway, a change, or catalyst means there’s now an old path, and a new path:
The old path - Play by the rules. You have to look a certain way to train.
The military boot camps.
The bodybuilding style training…
The old path was about fitting in, and doing things a certain way.
The new path - We’re here to tell you that you can go your own way… and we’ll support you
And in the Anytime ‘world’, they will help you, with cardio equipment, trainers, weights… Whatever you need, they’ll support you and guide you.
For their target audience, the new game creates a feeling of being welcome, no matter who you are.
And it also creates ‘conflict’ with the old path. Critical.
Also, notice the lack of ‘claims’…
Before, there was the claim that “epic” is waiting right around the corner. That’s all gone!
A lot of smaller gyms fall into the claims trap:
Get into great shape by summer. Live your best life with us. Et cetera.
Big, often broad claims, that mean you blend in quickly…
Now, the only ‘claim’ Anytime makes is that they’ll support you every step of the way.
Part 2 - How to ‘win’ on the new path, or in the new story
On the main page, now they direct you to the article bank. There are hundreds of articles over the years, to help readers win. In particular “motivation quotes for anybody” - focusing on not just gym motivational quotes, but motivational disability quotes, motivation quotes for women et cetera. The story is even stronger the deeper you go.
There are also recipes and training tips.
Part 3 - Success Stories
Strong success stories are proof that the new story they are creating actually works.
So, we would expect to see a bunch of stories of a diverse group of people (‘any’ body), winning, in a range of ways, because fitness looks different now.
And, we wouldn’t expect to see transformation photos, strength gains, or more typical gym success stories.
Because that was (in their world), the ‘old path.’
Here we go:
I didn’t highlight the other messages, but here they from left to right
My childhood medic alert bracelet broke, and I took that as a sign to be the one in control of my own journey.
It motivates me to better my health & well-being for the longevity of my Paramedic career.
I need be physically & mentally strong enough to support Sam.
My motivation is to NEVER SAY NO TO ADVENTURE!
Being able to visit and do photography of incredible animals and scenery.
These are missing a few things as far as success stories go… But they’re trying.
These stories tell us: Anytime Fitness is a place for any body to come in, and find out what fitness looks like for them, so that they can go out and do the things that they love.
The focus of this case study was to show that there’s no biz-ness that’s ‘too big’.
And that if you want to clarify, or flesh out your business story to help with marketing (and business strategy), it’s very possible. Even if you’ve been going for eight years.
The main learning though, is that there is one unifying story here.
Any body. Inclusivity. Fitness done your way.
Anytime didn’t try to mix multiple story arcs (maximal strength, women’s training seperate, yoga etc).
They might have those offers within the world, but they would exist as quests that the customer goes on, once they’re bought into the overall story.
Once you clarify your business story, you know stand alone, and know where you’re going in your strategy and marketing.
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Business story ‘catalyst’ - engaging your audience w/out the hype
An email from a meditation teacher. He’s tweaking his messaging to be a more story-driven biz-ness:
“…to reply to your previous [article] about RA MA. The ‘technology’ angle is one i'm taking seriously and something your article reaffirmed. I’ve been reframing my work around the concept of 'awakened intelligence' and opposing it to artificial intelligence and the dangers it poses… I believe this reframe solidifies my work and business, and gives it the context it needs to be successful.”
A big hurdle we face in service businesses is, “how do you help people take action?”
As buyers, often, it’s easier to do nothing, than it is to buy.
Marketers try to overcome this with claims. Claims about the problem we say the customer has. Claims about how great we are at solving it.
But with so much ‘claims’ noise, it’s hard to cut through to build trust.
So no matter how long you make that social media copy… how many emoji’s or how many client testimonial screen shots… in a saturated market, it can all get blocked, and…
The buyer stays emotionally unengaged.
Naturally, or course, we don’t pay attention to claims.
But, we do notice ‘change’. Change in our bank balance. Change in the weather. Change in clothing trends. Change in politics. Change attracts attention, and in some cases, almost ‘forces’ us into action.
[This kind of ties back to my view on social media even. A lot of brand people will say you want the grid to all look the same. But I think of brand more like the story. So have your grid changing. Do different things. And trust that the story will make sense over time. Much less boring.]
Anyway, so we can think about a whole business ‘story’ as starting with change, or, a ‘catalyst’, that kicks the story off into action.
In another article I pounded out about RA MA Institute, we saw the ‘catalyst’ was the ‘Technology Age’:
And each business will have a different catalyst.
The raging dentist…
Now that I think about it, there’s also a dentist that my wife goes to, his name is Dr. Steven Lin. Now, a lot of people don’t like this guy. They ‘rage’ against him. But he’s got a horde of fans as well. And his whole business story is really built on this idea that there’s been a ‘catalyst’ in the food industry. The soil quality is down. We’ve lost a lot of nutrients. And people are short on calcium, and vitamin K2, and it’s hurting their health.
So some of his content is on tooth care.
But a big percentage is pointing to this change. And he’s constantly getting trolled. Because some people prefer the status quo. But then his fans defend him against the trolls. But he has a great business. In the end, he’s a dentist. But the story is built around this massive catalyst, that creates a movement.
Deep down, most of us know that a catalyst is important for a story
And when we ain’t clear on an overarching catalyst in our business story, we try to make our own…
We can resort to what I call the five ‘dark horsemen’ of tactical marketing: claims heavy, hype heavy, false scarcity, false urgency and sudden discounts…
But as consumers, we catch this…
We can tell when there’s a lack of a narrative, and we sense claims based, self-serving marketers. It doesn’t mean we won’t buy, it just means we’re buying because we have to, rather than getting on board with a movement.
A story-driven business needs a change strong enough to be a ‘catalyst’, to drive the story forward, and help clients take action
What is a ‘catalyst’?
In chemistry class they talked about it as something that speeds up a reaction.
But what about a catalyst in a story?
Wiktionary.org defines it:
“an inciting incident that sets the successive conflict into motion”
The literary catalyst is one of the most important elements in a story. In fact, without one, there ain’t a story.
And in business, if there ain’t a story, all we have is claims and convincing.
OK so back to our meditation friend. This is what our friend is tapping into:
Selling a meditation service on its own is difficult. It is broad, non-urgent, and is difficult to inspire someone to take action, now.
But rather than bringing in the five dark horsemen, he’s zooming out to clarify his business ‘story.’
And looking for a ‘catalyst’ in the culture, that we agree with, and that helps us take action, now.
Is this the right one for him?
Possibly.
It’s worth looking at what we need for a catalyst anyway.
The other night Ruby got the first season of “Yellowstone”. (We’re behind the times, mostly because we were stuck on Seinfeld for another round…).
The first episode of a series is always interesting. They’ve gotta introduce characters, the world, and then, there needs to be one (or a few) catalysts, which kick off the story. So anyway, a bunch of stuff happens in that first one. But the major incident is one of John Dutton’s sons (he’s the main guy), gets shot. Straight away you know it’s on, and is the catalyst that will spark the story and major conflict.
And that’s the thing, there’s a lot of little incidents. But that was the inciting incident. It was big enough to force action.
And same in the biz-ness story. A little change ain’t going to do anything, Jimmy.
The change needs to be important enough to be a ‘catalyst’.
Around twenty years ago, Audi sensed that the market for diesel cars was shifting.
But the problem was, they needed to prove that it would be important.
They were early.
So what they did was, they redesigned their Audi R10 Le Mans 24 hour car. They build a whole new car. And they put a diesel engine into it. They realised that if they could be more efficient, they would stop less, have a higher top average speed, and could be competitive.
They won a few years in a row.
Instead of just yapping on that ‘people might like diesel more’ in a market where petrol cars were booming, they showed that winners were already using the new diesel technology. By winning with it.
This became a strong catalyst for diesel consumer cars.
Going back to our friend with the meditation service…
A key step - whatever his catalyst ends up being - will be to see how he can ‘show’ that some people who are using meditation are thriving.
And how those who are ignoring meditation are struggling.
This makes the ‘catalyst’ strong enough that there are real stakes. That can impact their bottom line, identity, social status, or other important factor. Something that means his people need to pay attention.
I.e.
** In the beauty industry, it could be that you are with the trend vs. being left behind.
** In the fashion industry, it could be that you’re riding the wave of reinvention or renaissance, like Sézane.
** In business, it could be that your customers want to be a part of your story because of where you’re going and what you do, versus ignoring you and you go broke.
2 - The catalyst needs to be controversial (to some), but, a ‘head nod’ (to others)
This happens every few years in the diet industry.
The Keto diet called for living on ‘ketones’, by cutting out carbohydrates (‘carbs are useless’)
This was controversial.
But, when they present the ‘new information’ that led to this, it was also a head nod for some people.
CrossFit did this also. Weighted exercise for time was controversial.
But, when they presented the change in functional fitness, and studies they had done, it was also a head nod for some and became a catalyst.
If the catalyst or change has no controversy, then it isn’t a catalyst. Controversy happens when a change is proposed relative to a status quo.
Look for a head nod, but look for some haters.
3 - The ‘catalyst’ must be absolute (not your opinion)
“People are looking for something different” doesn’t cut it.
There should be some kind of evidence to the catalyst or change.
Example:
There’s a physiotherapy business in Brisbane, FKB Physio.
Frances Brown helps mostly older women with rehabilitation and bone density, and strengthening. Rather than ‘avoiding incidents’, now they know it’s better to ‘build resilience’ in the body.
The catalyst that she can point to is new information around osteoporosis and osteopenia.
Which means the old path of avoidance is no longer helpful. And the new path of strength is much better.
As people are naturally aging as well, there’s a second level of urgency (or a second ‘catalyst’).
A strong starting point if she decides to double down on that position.
Note: In the most powerful cases, the catalyst is spoken about in content or on a site, which creates the old way of doing things. And highlights the new way. For example, Frances can point to the previous way of doing things, and bring this out in content and in presentations. Then point to it almost as the ‘enemy’, which creates conflict, and a more engaging story.
But this ain’t always the case.
With Sézane, we saw the catalyst is isn’t overtly pointed out. However, it’s pretty clear it’s in line with the technology age that really took off around 2012. The ‘old way’ is succumbing to the technology, with boring, flat colours, and lack of ‘experience’ in life. The new way, is the renaissance.
Conclusion
A lot of businesses want to say they are ‘carving a new path.’
But for this to be true, there had to be an ‘old path.’
One of the responsibilities that we have as marketers is to name that old path, and point to the change in context, or ‘catalyst’, that means it’s no longer working.
(Otherwise, why not just stay on the old path?).
When you do this, you tap into one of the deeper laws of human nature. That, we don’t want to be left behind…
We want to be current, and up to speed with the crowd. So, we pay attention, just like we pay attention to change in general.
And this also creates natural ‘conflict’ in your story (old vs. new), which is important.
Examples of catalysts could be a trend (this season people want ‘colour’) or this could be a seismic cultural shift (RA MA Institute). Or it could be new information, or an external event.
Either way, now, rather than buying your offer because you convinced us, we can buy into your story, because we believe in where you are going, and how you help us navigate and transform in this new world.
Now you are carving a new path together, as a movement, rather than trying to get them into your program or work as a short term solution.
Your offer is simply the best, or most obvious way for us to move forward in that story.
The Sézane masterclass in worldbuilding and story-driven marketing
One thing that’s going on ‘round the here lately is Ruby is learning French
She’s using the app. She also follows this lady on instagram, who, each day, goes through a French word. She might explain how to pronounce a syllable or something. Plus, she also follows a bunch of French fashion brands, and artists.
Well Ruby was watching this video about how to say a word, and at the end of the lady pointed to her t-shirt. Talking about how she’s done a collaboration with another brand, Sézane…
Now, I normally wouldn’t be so interested in all of this.
But I knew that Ruby had bought a bunch of Sézane clothes over the years. And that this French fashion brand has blown up. In particular, a few months back she came into the office after they had a sell-out clothing drop, and it all went in thirty minutes.
Before she could get any…
Anyway, so my ears pricked up at this video.
I pointed to the phone.
“They’re in the French culture ‘world’, not the Fashion world” I blurted out.”
“Who?” She asked.
“Sézane”
“But this lady is teaching French, not selling clothes”
“‘Zactly!”
And this is a really key thing for service businesses to think about.
“Market the world, before the offer. Sell the world, before the offer.”
Most service businesses position ‘relatively’ through claims.
For example, a gym might say ‘we’re not CrossFit’... or “we can help you lose weight faster, here’s our proof.” Or a nutritionist might say “You need to fix your mindset around eating. Here’s how…” Coaches: “It's time to change, I’ll help you.”
This puts you smack in the middle of the ‘claims based’ marketing noise (‘claim’ to solve a problem the business describes), that is so filled with hot air, promises, and general chatter, that it’s almost impossible to stand out.
Especially now, where consumers need to trust a brand much more before purchase.
So a lot of times, this leads to discounting, or being ignored, or, both…
But when you sell the world, before the offer, you’re a story-driven business. You’re taking the position of a ‘movement champion’ rather than a claims based marketer in the middle of a sea of red noise.
And by championing a new movement that the client wants to be a part of, your offer (or Sézane’s offer in this case) becomes the default choice for anyone wanting to ‘wear’ the French culture.
Let’s break down how Sezanne does this, so you can apply the thinking to your own biz-ness as you see fit…
Note: Should we pay attention to product businesses if we run a service? Absolutely. Hospitality businesses are great as well.
Step One: Sézane clearly defines their ‘world’
You can think of your ‘world’ as your meta. The genre, or setting of your business. Where you’re located, the characters, the colours et cetera.
Your ‘world’ infuses everything you do. Because it’s where the story takes place.
(Go back through the articles or podcasts for more on this)
This is part of the ‘story’ as explained on Sézane’s ‘About Page’:
So, what do we know now…?
First, from the name, the site title, we know that the brand is French. With a coastal vibe.
We know that they are about a ‘new story’, because they told us.
More:
Further down on the ‘About’ page, in the film “10 Years of Creation as Told by Victor” where he talks about Sézane, he states:
‘The Parisian life, symbol of their Renaissance, and their Revolution’.
‘Renaissance’ is French for ‘re-birth’. Or creating a new version, or a new story.
More:
On the about page, they have something called Sézane en Rose. ‘On the first Wednesday of every month, we wear pink to raise awareness and support breast cancer organisations across the world.’
OK, so here’s what we have:
** The ‘world’ is mostly for women.
** The ‘world’ is about French culture.
** The ‘world’ is colourful, musical, and has dancing
** The ‘world’ is about Renaissance and Revolution.
** The ‘world’ is about fashion.
While we know they sell something to do with fashion, nothing has been said about the product yet.
As we take in this ‘world’, we start to look deeper at the story as it could apply to us as the consumer. Which is always the main reason the business exists. I.e. to make a change for a particular group of people.
Why look at the ‘world’ first with marketing?
You don’t have to. But it’s typically fixed from the backstory of the business owner a little bit.
Plus, it creates an ‘immersive’ way of thinking, that allows the customer to go on a lot of deeper journeys:
“I eventually came to believe that instead of conceiving of a story and then creating a world in which it could be told and make sense, I should create the world first - then let the player have access to all of its capabilities as they negotiate their own story.”
- Richard Garriott
Note: Some people like to create the story first. And that’s OK.
Others, will try to just create the offer. A solution for a particular problem.
And there’s nothing wrong with that either. But in a crowded market, if you create the world first, or at least in line with your core narrative, you shift to becoming a ‘story-driven’ business, that stands alone.
Step Two: Define the Story, or Narrative
OK, so the ‘world’ is defined.
Remember, this is just the setting, or theme for your business story.
Let’s look at that main business story. This is the ‘game’ the business is helping their customers play.
This is why your business exists. It must make some kind of consistent change.
For example.
In Creator Club, the overarching ‘story’ is you learn the skills to build a unique, well-known and profitable business.
Let’s look at a gym:
Inside the world of a gym, there must be one overarching narrative.
You get stronger. Or you get more flexible. Team training. Or you get more fitness so you can show up at your job better.
(Gyms that lack a core narrative can struggle over time)
OK, back to our example, Sézane.
In the Sézane world, there is one core narrative:
To embrace your version of your own renaissance. To have your own ‘French Revolution’.
Now this started in France, where they began. But soon, it spread.
And, once Sézane spread to other countries, it was about a ‘new’ sense of culture, life and energy.
For Ruby, for example, she has European heritage, she went to France when she was young.
And now living in Australia, she has a craving for that culture. So, she started to learn French, et cetera.
[Note: Often, your core narrative is more powerful when it coincides with a cultural shift, or ‘change’ that makes it more urgent. For example, although not stated on the site. Sézane’s ‘renaissance’ narrative, of a new, more energised future, is in contrast to a lot of the technocratic, or more ‘muted’ lifestyle that is more common now. In this sense, they are rising up in the face of a change, presenting a new opportunity to buyers.]
Variations to the narrative
Note: For most businesses, there are a lot of variations to how that major narrative will play out for each person.
I.e. People may go to your gym for slightly different reasons. Or some people do certain classes, and not others at a yoga studio. Because they don’t follow exactly the same path.
Here’s a specific example:
In Creator Club, there are full time employees building side businesses.
There are architects. Trainers. Coaches. Consultants.
All building story-driven businesses.
And while that is the main narrative, some people are using it to become more confident in all parts of their lives. Others are using it to meet people, and take advantage of the social aspect of the live events. Others, are purely focused on revenue.
And you’ll find in your business, that people have all kinds of directions they can go.
And you can either try to control that. Or, you can build your world in more ways so that they can develop their own stories in their own ways.
(And stay within your business world.)
Anyway, let’s go back to Sézane, if you think about the French Revolution or Renaissance ‘story’, well there are different facets to that narrative.
The clothing
The food or the art
The people, and community
The music, and dancing (that period was known for a lot of music)
The language
You can probably see where this is going in terms of offers and content…
But once you define the over-arching narrative of your business, things get a lot easier.
Let’s look at two more examples.
Let’s say you’re a Yoga Studio.
Well, if you are clear on the overarching narrative - let’s say it’s preparing the mind and body for the modern world (similar to RA MA institute).
Well, what are some of the ways that could play out…
The client gets better at ‘skills’
The people come together to meet each other at ‘community events’
The client learns ways to build physical strength
The client learns ways to improve their relationships
The client goes to classes specifically to clear the mind
All of these help the customer progress further on the overarching narrative.
OK, last one.
Let’s say you’re a Real Estate agent.
Well, the over-arching story might be for the customer to become a proud home-owner and welcome and respected member of the community. OK, some of the quests, or ways that could play out:
Finding a home
Financing a home
Setting up your home
Meeting your community
Maximising your home for re-sale
Your ‘world’ will have tools, and assets that help people to go down one, or any of these paths.
This gets clearer as you learn more from customers, and look for more ways to help them.
For more on narrative, check out the RA MA article here.
Step Three: Create offers to help clients move forward in their story
There are two kinds of offers. Paid. And Free.
A lot of free offers might fall under the ‘content’ banner for service businesses.
But they are still offers!
When I saw Ruby watching the video, she was learning how to say certain words in French.
It’s both entertaining, and, is helping her to feel like she’s moving closer to the goal. That was the ‘value’.
She’s paying for the ‘free’ content with time and attention… That’s the trade. And, this is helpful when you think about your content, because you can learn to see it like a paid offer. It has to provide a benefit for the reader.
If the content is obviously moving the reader closer to the sale, it’s usually a benefit for you.
If the content is obviously moving the reader forward in their story, then it’s a benefit to them.
OK, let’s look at the Sezane offers.
We’ll break them down to both ‘paid’ and ‘free’.
‘Free’ Offers:
App that you can get to check out latest styles. This seems self serving, but remember in fashion, it’s also helping the audience create vision
Educational and inspirational content on social media
French lessons
Clothing / outfit ideas
Inspiration through showing customers dressed in Sezane.
One of my favourites - a Sezane playlist, which is used at the official Sezane l’appartement store in Paris
Other notable content:
Multiple dance collaborations: Sezane x LA Dance Project
Dance videos on the website
About the staff videos that are interesting
General content (social media) is largely grouped into three categories:
Examples of customers who are moving forward in their own story of ‘renaissance’
Education, ideas or tips to move forward in the story yourself
Product offers (how to actually buy the clothes to move forward in the story)...
This takes us to the paid offers…
‘Paid’ Offers:
Clothing
Cookware from collaboration with chef
Men’s clothing
Bags
Shoes
Jewelry
Swimwear
Maternity
Glasses
The clothing we expect from a clothing brand. But all the offshoot offers? Simply other ways to ‘surround’ yourself with your own French Renaissance.
Finally let’s look at the influencer collaborations:
Collaboration with Jamie Beck, author, photographer
Collaboration with Elénore Toulin, who does cooking content (French Chef)
Collaboration with Suzanne Meyer dancer.
Collaboration with G. Kero, a particularly colourful artist.
In each case, influencer collaborations are not set up just use other people’s audience to make more sales or awareness (usually the influencer is much smaller in audience size)
They are set up because they benefit the customer first and foremost, by uncovering more of the main narrative (renaissance), in a different way - i.e. through music, or art.
Alright, so the offers in a business should not be ‘presented’ with their features, or as stand-alone offers to make money for the business.
This includes ‘free’ offers, like content.
But rather, as stepping stones for those who want to go deeper in the world, and progress further on the main narrative, or story.
A story-driven business supports this even for non-paying customers. Because they are driven by the story. Customers pay for the deeper level of guidance, support, or in this case, immersion with the clothing.
Sézane ain’t wildly popular not because their clothing is well designed (it is).
It’s not wildly popular because it’s driven by influencers.
They are wildly popular because they have created a story that resonates, with an immersive world.
Rather than trying to ‘sell’ the offers all the time, they have a limited amount of stock of the clothing, and a much bigger amount of content, world-building, and tools to help inspire customers to move forward in their own narrative, or story of ‘renaissance.’
They are not just a clothing company.
They are champions of a movement: create your own ‘renaissance’.
All that is to say, if you want to build a story-driven business, your three areas of focus are:
What is the world (setting, and overall theme).
What is the over-arching ‘narrative’ taking place in that world?
What are your offers. These are stepping stones to move forward in the main narrative of your business.
Want to add more offers? Run a live event?
Great, what do your clients need to move forward in their journey, or story?
Want to inspire your clients to go down more quests, spend more time in your business?
Great, add more depth and detail to your world so they can explore.
‘Eazy-Email’ Three story-driven ideas for email marketing and articles
Claims-based marketing is out.
Story-driven marketing is in. Act accordingly.
When I was an up-n-comer-gym owner, the rage was to run Facebook ad campaigns for 6 week challenges in the gyms.
Challenge was $300 or so, and then try to ‘sell’ em on the back end for the membership.
We ran one. It was moderately successful on the front end. But only a couple stuck around. The problem (even then) was we did things differently to other gyms (slower, stricter et cetera), and the people who came in just wanted the challenge deal. It’s the whole ‘not part of the world for long enough’ deal.
Anyway, I don’t know for sure anymore, but from what I can tell, a lot of those tactics ain’t working like they used to.
People want to go deeper now, they need to trust you more, and they are hesitant to act unless there’s a catalyst.
Enter the world of longer form content: emails and articles
Longer platforms where you can hash out your compelling business story, talk about the change that’s happening in the culture, that’s important, and show people how to progress.
But how do we come up with ideas?
“We don’t know where we get our ideas from. We do know that we do not get them from our laptops.”
-John Cleese
I have to say, I get a few ideas from the laptop (watching old interviews, et cetera).
But largely agree with Cleese.
The most compelling stories seem to come from the real world, our business, and the people we serve.
When you do this well…
Every time we read your article, or email, we’re getting more clarity on your business story.
So here are three types, that work great for a story-driven business.
Type One: Strategies, ideas, or tips to move forward in your new world
If you’ve followed my other work, or are using a story-driven approach to your own marketing, then you’ll be familiar with the idea that in your business, what you’re really doing is creating a new ‘world’, or a new future for your clients.
And that this new world, is important because of a some kind of change in the culture.
Example:
Say you’re a lawyer, and there’s a shift in the business climate, people need more support, and the old way of dealing with cut-throat lawyers on a per-minute basis is dead.
The new, high-trust way is having a lawyer support your with a fixed job fee.
Or…
You’re a premium, online personal trainer, and people are spending more time at home, are more stressed, and are less active than they used to be. The old model of exercise prescription doesn’t suit where we are now.
This calls for a new type of strength training that’s more holistic…
Or…
You’re an accountant. There’s been a change in the culture because Xero and other software takes care of a lot of the admin work…
So the new world is where you service clients more like an advisor, or even business mentor, helping set KPI’s or strategy.
In each case, there’s a change we’re pointing out. This creates an old way of doing things, and a new way, or new ‘world.’
This ain’t the only way to do it. But it helps to position you as a leader, rather than a salesperson.
And because you’re now an evangelist of the new path, there’s an opportunity to deliver ‘value’ - i.e. how to take another step forward in your new world.
So anyway, this is one way to find stories for emails and articles. Look for tips, breakdowns, case-studies that could help people to move forward in your new way of thinking, so they can thrive in the new environment.
Note: This is very different to a ‘general’ tip that you see a lot of. Because it’s in the new way of thinking. Therefore, helps to tell the story of your business more clearly.
[Yep, this article is an example of exactly that.]
Type Two: Stories of client wins [or other people who are aligned with the new world]
When you’re leading a new charge, you want to celebrate that whole new direction and way of thinking, not just your service or offer.
This is where a lot of service businesses fall short. They celebrate specific ‘successes’ or testimonials of their clients, but it’s often self serving and obvious.
“Here’s my client Brad, look at his results. I was responsible for that. Buy from me…”
Hmm.
Instead, what happens if you broadly discuss, and celebrate wins of people who are making progress in the new world that you’ve mapped out.
Let’s go back to the examples:
The small business lawyer celebrates the small business that’s thriving in the new economy.
The premium trainer celebrates other practitioners or athletes training in the new way.
The accountant celebrates businesses that are succeeding with KPIs and business goals.
Clients who are winning.
Peers who are winning.
And other industry leaders who have a similar vision, and are part of your new way of doing things.
All can be gold stories for your emails and articles.
[even in some parts of the health niche, where there are rules around testimonials. This is fine, because you are telling a broader story, not drawing a direct conclusion from your service]
When you think about success stories, think about ‘success’ in the new world, or new way of doing things.
This will open up a lot more opportunities for these stories.
Example:
In a recent article, I wrote about some of the best story-driven marketing I’ve ever seen. This (so far) has been one of the most highly viewed articles on the site.
The click through rate was astronomical.
But if you look at it, I just elevated a business that has great story-driven marketing, RA MA institute.
I didn’t work with them.
I just celebrated them, because they ‘got it’.
Our podcasts? Often the same thing. They’re filled with examples of businesses that we elevate.
Sure, we do elevate and celebrate clients as well. Success stories. But you can go bigger, for your emails, and it helps you to build your narrative of what you’re about. It shows that you aren’t just in this for ‘you’, but you’re also passionate about the cause or change that you want to make.
[I’ve seen some clients thrive almost exclusively on client win emails, and new world strategies/tips emails. i.e. Type 1 and Type 2.]
Type Three: Stories that reiterate why the new world is important
Yesterday I hosted a workshop for a podiatrist company that has a couple of business locations. They have a new world, or new game that they’re playing which is very different from the old school podiatrists. They use more strength training, and their focus is building capacity up in the body, rather than relying on orthotics and support for life et cetera.
Anyway, it’s not enough for them to just pop up once and say “You know, things have changed. Now we do it this way.” Or throw it on the sales page. They have to consistently point to the old way, and how it isn’t equipped to help us anymore.
Same for all of us.
Why I yap on so much about world building and story-driven businesses, and why we are seeing them thrive in the new trust-economy. Not enough to just drop it once, you gotta repeat it. (“It’s provocative… It keeps the people goin.”)
You need to keep reminding us of the macro shift, or importance of your new world, in the content. That’s where the story is told. That’s where the sale is largely made.
So stories around this shift can be great for content like emails and articles.
Another example:
Everyone knows Brené Brown for her work about vulnerability. Well what she did was she researched ‘shame’ for years. She kept uncovering more information about why ‘shame’ has become an important topic when it comes to vulnerability in today’s culture. That things have changed, and we need to learn to bring out shame et cetera. Kept talking about it.
Point is, she re-iterates this shift around needing to talk about shame in the new culture.
And this is something we can resonate with, and drives up the necessity of listening to her.
You see this in political content all the time. They do it almost daily. “So and so did this or that”. And then they say “See! They are so bad”. This helps to raise the stakes, and reiterate what the vision of the future could be like with that person leading.
Some health coaches do this well too.
They constantly point to the declining food quality, or the drop in testosterone for men in general, whatever. And by bringing this up over and over, it doesn’t focus on the individual’s problem, but speaks to the changing context, and why working on health in their way is more important now than before.
Whether you’re in design, professional services, coaching… remind us why your work is important ‘now’, by telling stories about the relevant change in the culture.
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This may be the best story-driven marketing I've ever seen
It’s RA MA Institute.
Here’s the breakdown…
A few months back I visited a friend who runs a gym.
He was talking about getting some clarity on the business ‘story’, to try and bring the staff together, and be more connected around a vision.
Very important, and of course at the heart of content marketing, decisions, et cetera.
Anyway, he’d see my other work. Where, I’ve talked about how we help businesses with story-driven marketing, and how this can also bring the team together powerfully. He asked if we could run a small story strategy workshop up at their centre.
A couple weeks later we met at his lair, and started off the team session.
After lunch, once we’d loaded up on a home-made slow cooked beef, we got into the real ‘juice’ of their story strategy.
To guide us through the five stages, I gave them the following example.
Some of the greatest story-driven marketing I’ve ever seen…
The Story-Driven Marketing Structure
The business I shared with Matt and his team was the global studio that is RA MA Institute. RA MA is a Kundalini Yoga Institute founded by the late, great Guru Jagat, that provides “Yogic and Meditative Experiences for True Freedom and Fulfilment.”
They offer in person experiences, online yoga classes, retreats and more.
So they’re a yoga studio and community, but certainly unlike any other…
[A personal note. I first came upon RA MA through watching the changes that I noticed with my wife, Ruby, when she found Guru Jagat’s work in 2018. Over the years, Ruby went deeper into the RA MA world, through Kundalini teacher training, the business training, et cetera.
Ruby made a lot of life-long friends from RA MA.
Three things:
I’ve never worked professionally with RA MA, or anyone affiliated with them
I have only respect and appreciation for Guru Jagat, and the path she and the team carved with RA MA. This article is about ‘marketing’. To me, marketing is the story. It’s the overall change that we’re making. It’s truth. So I ain’t trying to pigeon hole Guru Jagat’s work into marketing speak, I’m just observing from my lair, through a story-driven marketing framework.
Since Guru Jagat’s passing, RA MA Institute may have changed. I’m not sure, as I haven’t watched as close personally. This article is based on RA MA as I saw it, prior to Guru Jagat’s passing.
It’s also clear that Guru Jagat was a great marketer. She knew what it meant to create a narrative:
"You do have to create the narrative and you shouldn't be afraid"
-Guru Jagat
Anyway, all images, quotes and ideas are directly from the RA MA website at various times, from Guru Jagat’s book Invincible Living, or from Yogi Bhajan’s work, who originally popularised Kundalini Yoga.]
Anyway, Matt and the team shrugged when I mentioned RA MA…
But as we dove into the story strategy… it was a different vibe altogether.
We could see how clearly the story structure allowed Guru Jagat to champion a new ‘movement’ that RA MA followers and members could get behind, that spearheaded a new direction in the culture.
STEP ONE - Point out a change in the culture that impacts your people
Most service providers lead by talking about their service, or at best, with a ‘problem’:
“We have a great community.”
“You can’t find a good gym”.
“You’re struggling to lose weight”.
“You’re tired of accountants that take too long.”
And typically, the more urgent, and painful the problem, the better.
There can be two issues with this. First, we can put up with a problem for a long time. Even for life. Second, when you tell someone they have a problem, it can put them on the defense.
They can ‘armour’ up, and then are not receptive to the message.
But when you point out a cultural change that is important to us, and happening now, then we will often pay attention, and become more receptive.
This is the catalyst for the hero (your customer) to set off on their quest.
Here’s an opening ‘slide’ of the old RA MA site:
More:
It ain’t just a once-off on the site. Guru Jagat relentlessly, repeatedly reiterates this message.
"We're in a new trajectory on the planet. This is a new time with new challenges, requirements, and rules of engagement than even five years ago.
And she ain’t alone. There’s ‘lineage’ to this (more on lineage value in marketing another time).
Her teachers, predecessors and elders, all the way to Yogi Bhajan, who first brought Kundalini to the West in the 1960’s also pointed to this change:
"We will find people getting empty, more perturbed, not able to bear enough, not having much tolerance, and very argumentative. It is not the fault of people. It is the result of the power with which the psyche flows on the planet... What is coming is very proper, qualified, calculated, and demonstrative insanity. Whenever a nation goes through a demonstrative insanity, it changes the order…”
-Yogi Bhajan
This ‘change’ coincides with the shift into the Aquarian Age. Which a lot of yogic schools talk about.
But Guru Jagat repeatedly points to this shift. Constantly reminding us of the urgency, and attacking it from different angles and schools of thought.
Example:
In other places, she used the terms “Digital Age” and “Technology Age”, pointing to the shift to the digital reality / reality hybrid life-style we now have.
From what I can tell, Guru Jagat also coined and embodied the “creation culture”, which coincided with this change that we’re going through as a culture.
Note: While there is already a sense of the ‘problem’ that could be tied up with this change, it’s the change that is in the spotlight. This is a macro change. It’s not the individual. This was also pointed out by Yogi Bhajan:
“It is not the fault of people”... “It is the result of the power with which the psyche flows on the planet”.
Very specific, urgent, and major.
Again, while uncomfortable, a static problem can be ignored. A changing problem, or accelerating situation with high stakes, cannot be ignored.
Watch animals, they pay attention to change. Not static problems. Watch your own behaviour around your phone, your inbox, your bank account. We pay attention to change over static problems.
Step one in this story-driven framework, is, point out a change or catalyst that is relevant to your customers.
This satisfies one of the key questions in marketing: “Why now?”
STEP TWO - Raise the Stakes (create tension through vision)
Marketers will tell you that there are two drivers for change. We move ‘away’ from pain, or potential loss (go to the doctor). Or that we move towards pleasure, or gain (train to get stronger).
You must show both, by creating both positive, and negative ‘vision’.
Show how recognising the change will lead to a positive future for the customer.
Show how ignoring the change will lead to a negative future that they can’t ignore.
RA MA and Guru Jagat did this eloquently:
“For the past 15 years I’ve watched the pressure of the Technology Age consume more and more of our fading attention span and vitality”
“The required upgrade is creating a very palpable pressure. With the demands of technology and the massive shifts in economic, geopolitical, and societal values, our human operating system is also upgrading. We have the choice to either consciously participate in this shift or be in conflict with it.”
She shows the positive vision both personally through her own example (demonstration marketing: starting fashion brands, producing music, creating the institute).
She also points to other Creators:
“After… becoming introduced to the technology of Kundalini Yoga, every part of me has become more awakened. I’m clearer, stronger, more conscious, more creative than ever. I’m in a place I always wanted to get to but couldn’t quite figure the way before”
-Alicia Keys, Recording Artist
Contrast creates tension.
We’re presented with a choice between two visions. The vision of chaos of the mind. And the vision of having the strength to deal with the Digital Age, and the Aquarian age. And therefore having very positive personal power, relationships, health and business.
To bring this home, Guru Jagat regularly repeats the stakes:
“Either the technology is using you, or you're using the technology”
I believe the ‘technology’ she refers to is two fold. The technology that we have, AND the Kundalini ‘Technology’ - mantras, kriyas, et cetera.
STEP THREE - Show What’s Possible for The Customer
Notice at this point, there is still no mention of the service! There’s no mention of the membership.
But here, Guru Jagat helps you see what was possible:
“In this pressurisation, something incredible has emerged, mainly a viral need for wellness on a deeper and deeper level; a quick and efficient way to release the pressure. To see that possibly there is a way to live that is more vital, more inspired, less based in fear and anxiety. There is a different way.”
“You can do it right now, in very little time, be connected to a deeper pulse of your life force, which manifests as instantaneous clarity, effectiveness, creativity, bravery and the like”
In some yoga circles, the benefits remain a bit theoretical and mystical. People show yoga poses on the beach. Or they speak with a spiritual tone, or have the green juice.
But Guru Jagat followed Yogi Bhajan’s lead of integrating yoga into business, community, fashion, technology and daily house-hold life. For the audience, this is a tangible way to show the possibility.
Don’t tell the customer what is possible for them. Show them.
Show them what life is like because of having your service, not having your service itself.
Powerful businesses, and leaders of powerful ‘movements’ are able to show the new reality that is available in this new time, based on playing a new game.
Or, more bluntly nobody cares about what we do. They care about what it does for them, and how it improves quality of life, status, opportunity, fulfilment.
Guru Jagat demonstrated this well, because she has the empathy and skill to show the intersection of the technology, with modern life aspirations (not separate to).
STEP FOUR - Teach people how to get the result through your features, education, and ‘world’.
By this point, we can see Guru Jagat as a voice, or a possible ‘guide’ to navigate this urgent change that’s happening.
What she then does, is, she shows how the features, or offers that she has can help you.
Without trying to ‘differentiate’ from other yoga schools, or services, or even talk about ‘em, you can see her selection of tools is wildly different. This is because she is presenting a new game, for the new age. It’s not the same game as before, because the times have changed (step 1).
Here is an incomplete selection of offers. Note that many are free, and simply take you deeper into her world:
Base Level and Free ‘Features / Offers’ within the community
**' ‘Invincible Living’ by Guru Jagat - Book
** Any number of Yogi Bajhan books on the Kundalini Technology
** Reality Riffing Podcast (free) for relevant conversations
** RA MA TV community channel (YouTube, free) for classes
** Fashion labels and clothing collections
** White Sun music (Mantra, sound technology to upgrade consciousness, health, energy)
And more…
RA MA Institute Offers:
** 3 Studios for in-person memberships - Los Angeles, New York and Mallorca
** In-person Workshops (available online too)
** In-person Kundalini Trainings (available online too)
** RA MA Yatras, camps
** Immense Grace and Aquarian Women’s Leadership Society Annual Programs
All very helpful.
Now, this is a LOT of resources or features…
Which, gives us three signals:
It reiterates the urgency and significance of the change (the characters are committed)
It shows there is depth to the world / technology (lineage, long term prolificness)
It is overwhelming if we were to try and implement it alone.
This last point is a positive, not a negative (just have one offer? List out multiple features and benefits).When we see the scope of the task, we understand the value of the guide…
And, we are in a perfect position to seek out the core offer:
Monthly RA MA TV membership (Recorded and Live options)
A membership, with all the classes, guidance and community, for $19 per month.
Step four is important (and one of my favourite.)
On a website, this will be your features.
But in a broader picture, it will include some of your content. We’re in a time where some people are saying ‘less is more’ with content. Or ‘don’t share too much, because there’s already so much noise out there.’
But make no mistake. While each business varies, step four favours the prolific, the energised, and the enthusiastic business owner. Guru Jagat was all of the above, and more.
More:
Many people think of content as “what should I put out?” from a perspective of the ego. And there can be a lot of subconscious stuff going on.
If we can see it through this story-driven lens, the question shifts to “what can I share today that may help, inspire, or energise people who are on board with this change and new game?”
Your content is helping to build your narrative, strengthening the relationship with the characters, and helping those who are on board. It feels less graspy, because it’s story-driven, not ego driven.
STEP FIVE - Show Proof of The Story Coming True
At this point, Guru Jagat and RA MA have presented evidence of a major, urgent shift (step 1). They’ve pointed out the stakes (step 2) - if you ignore the change, you get insanity. If you embrace it, you get personal power, energy and fulfilment. They’ve called you into action personally (step 3), and provided all of the resources to get there, even if you choose to go on your own, creating zero neediness (step 4). Now, like at the end of any story, we want to see proof.
In sales, this is called creating ‘certainty.’
Proof that it works, and proof that it addresses the original urgent change.
In your service, this is success stories, case studies testimonial videos, and of course, as mentioned, personal (or team) demonstration.
And this shows us another key, broader content pillar: show (don’t tell) examples of how people are adopting the change, and winning in your new world. Even if they aren’t your clients, by highlighting their wins, you are still marketing and selling the overall story.
What if you don’t have a lot of testimonials?
Two options - one is you do some work for free and get ‘em.
The other option is you double down on demonstration value. Create videos, audios or written assets to show the work that you can do.
A story strategy works best when people are talking about it
Yesterday I was talking to a client who just ran a three day launch for his business. Huge success.
Half way through though, he got some haters.
Another guy from a similar business was razzing him about it. “It wasn’t fair.” “He was ‘stealing’ clients” et cetera.
Of course none if this was true. But this is what happens when your story is clear and strong. You will have something for people to say yes to, and talk about with a positive energy…
And something for people to rally against.
And Guru Jagat had plenty of people rallying against her. I’m neither well versed in this enough to write about it, nor is it important to go deep here. But Yogi Bhajan and Guru Jagat both had trolls, haters, non-believers and more. Not only that, they wrote publicly about them, and the stories spread far.
This can be stressful. It also creates more engagement and awareness.
Lukewarm stories do not spread.
A story strategy works best when all the characters are on board
When we finished up the workshop, the best part wasn’t that there was a clear narrative for Matt at the CEO / Founder level.
It’s that the team was bought in.
Through clarifying their own unique story for the gym, they could see why they were drawn to Matt in the first place, because although it was hidden, it was at the heart of the business all along.
And now they could see how they each contributed to the story as individuals.
RA MA was the same. Clear characters were elevated, and their magic, strengths, and quirks were brought out. So while they were different, they all relayed the same story.
One of the biggest obstacles for small businesses is when the team (characters) have a disconnect with the overall story strategy.
At best it creates doubt, and resistance around talking about the story, or posting content. At worst, it creates ‘Lone Wolf’ mentalities, and an energetic hole in the business, leaking growth and profit.
At RA MA, not only was Guru Jagat constantly talking about this ‘shift’ to the technological age, but so was her husband, her peers and colleagues, her mentors. And it all resonated with exactly the same story.
“The most engagement ever”
A couple of weeks after we ran the workshop, I checked back in with Matt.
He’d done a few Instagram posts and videos in line with the clearer narrative, and updated the website to visually tell the story.
Those videos had the most engagement they’d ever had.
His one-to-one spots in the next few weeks sold out.
Their next monthly workshop sold out.
Their team began posting more on social media, and generating their own engagement, which all acts like a web, and tells the bigger picture story.
Of course these results come from a number of factors, and results always vary. But with a clear story-driven strategy for marketing and decision making, life gets a lot easier.