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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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:

1. The strength of a main story (a ‘catalyst’ or change, the old path, new path, and opportunity for the client)

2. How to win on the new path, or in the new story you’re creating

3. 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

1. My childhood medic alert bracelet broke, and I took that as a sign to be the one in control of my own journey.

2. It motivates me to better my health & well-being for the longevity of my Paramedic career.

3. I need be physically & mentally strong enough to support Sam.

4. My motivation is to NEVER SAY NO TO ADVENTURE!

5. 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.

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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.

1. The clothing

2. The food or the art

3. The people, and community

4. The music, and dancing (that period was known for a lot of music)

5. 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…

1. The client gets better at ‘skills’

2. The people come together to meet each other at ‘community events’

3. The client learns ways to build physical strength

4. The client learns ways to improve their relationships

5. 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:

1. Finding a home

2. Financing a home

3. Setting up your home

4. Meeting your community

5. 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:

1. Examples of customers who are moving forward in their own story of ‘renaissance’

2. Education, ideas or tips to move forward in the story yourself

3. 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: 

1. What is the world (setting, and overall theme). 

2. What is the over-arching ‘narrative’ taking place in that world?

3. 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.

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How to Make Your Business ‘World’ More Addictive

A lot of restaurants serve multiple courses. But only some take you on a journey. 

Back when we lived in Sydney, we were on a shoe-string budget. I had just opened a retail store, and I had spent everything I had. Still, for special occasions, there was a restaurant we would go to by the beach, called Pilu.

They had a set degustation menu, with six different courses.

You got to know your wait staff as they brought out each plate, and talked about the food. Which region the pork came from. Where the cheese was sourced. Why they chose a certain wine. Then there were the stories about how the restaurant started.

Anyway, we used to stuff ourselves until we could barley stand up, partly because we were so tight on cash and partly because it was so good. We would talk about the experience for days.

Sometimes, we’re in a rush. We want a $1 coffee from the gas station because it’s fast. 

But most of the time, we want to be part of something meaningful, that we can talk about, and remember.

And, the difference between the two, is often the depth of the story and detail of the world around the product or service.

Most businesses lack ‘depth’ or detail in their worlds.

Their clients are only loosely engaged. They end up competing on price. Or, with a case of ‘comparative superiority’, where they declare why the customer should come to them, not somewhere else.

But that’s a frustrating cycle to be in. And in the modern economy, where customers are demanding deeper worlds, and more trust, it’s rarely successful.

When we work to create deeper stories, we end up with more addictive worlds that people can engage in.

This changes people’s relationship with the business. It creates more referrals, longer lifetime value of the client, and a more satisfying business for both the creator and the clients.

Last month I was checking out MIT’s online courses

These have been going for about twenty years. They’re free. You can study computer science, geometry, mathematics. Anything. I was going to take a geometry class.

I sat on the decision for about four days.

Not because of the investment (it was free), but because I wasn’t sure if it was something I wanted to be a part of.

I knew if I took the course, and didn’t feel that it resonated with me, I would bail on it.

In the end, I decided to can it.

MIT is one of the great learning institutes in the world. As an engineer, part of me nerds out on that stuff. But it ain’t that different from Pilu, where a ‘takeaway’ degustation just wouldn’t be the same. It’s not just the information, or the food that has value. But all of the detail of the world that we learn from the staff, and from being ‘in the building.’

In a business, it can take time to create this ‘addictive’ depth

Some never develop it. Maybe they don’t want to - they would rather just be a run-of-the mill biz. But usually it’s because they have no idea that they can, or they focus only on the transaction. They don’t realise there’s a strategy to create more detail and engagement. So they’re constantly fighting with promotions, retention tactics, or trying to stand out in the noise by being louder.

When we first opened our second business, which was a gym, we had no detail at all.

The world was far from addictive.

But over the years, we started to accumulate stories.

Our programming got better.

We got a dog.

We did different merchandise runs.

We ran a lot of events that built a history.

I started to write blogs and create content.

Slowly we created a more compelling and detailed world.

But what we learned, was that ‘time’ isn’t necessarily required for this. You can create an addictive business world that people love to come back to, through a strategic process.

Here Are Three Ways You Can Add More Depth to Your Business World to Create Addiction and Meaning For Your Clients:

Step One: ‘Backstory Everything’

When I was young we went to Disneyland. I remember going around on all the rides, but the thing that I remember most was the depth of the world. You could go on the Matterhorn ride, then when you went to get a drink or a hot dog, you could buy something to do with Matterhorn. Then you could learn all about the history of the ride, or the backstory.

There is a timeless lineage for everything in the park. From Mickey Mouse, to the physical park itself. Each feature has a story.

Disneyland is an addictive world for people for a lot of reasons, but one of them is the level of depth created through backstory.

The movie Dune based on Frank Herbert’s book is another example.

Alongside the film there’s a ‘behind the scenes’ book, all about the worldbuilding that they did. The book made a way for true fans to learn more about the backstory, or lineage, of each part of the movie. They talked about how the props were built, who designed the costumes, how they put it all together.

Another example I talk about is Quentin Tarantino, who wrote pages of dialogue and story of his characters, before he would write the whole script with them.

He was ‘manufacturing’ back story (even though it never was shown), because he knew that if it existed somewhere, it would give more depth to the characters.

One of the most helpful things we can do early on with established business owners is build out a more detailed and real backstory.

Not because a soppy story will help them ‘get clients,’ but because a richer, deeper world with lineage is more immersive.

In my own work, I talk about parts of my marriage, the lair that I write from, or whatever is going on in my own life because it creates depth and context. 

What happens if you go through your business and uncover, or even ‘manufacture’ back story with everything that you do?

Where did your logo come from?

Where did the music come from?

Where did you learn the style of programming you do at your studio?

Whether it’s Westside Barbell, Disney, Oprah, Lord of the Rings, or Virgin, deep and addictive worlds have backstory built out for almost all parts of the business.

Step Two: Tie Things Together

In The Dark Knight there’s a scene where Batman shuts down the lights when he’s fighting Bane.

Bane says:

“Oh you think darkness is your ally. You merely adopted the dark, I was born in it. Molded by it. I didn’t see the light until I was already a man, and by then it was nothing to me but blinding… Shadows betray you, because they belong to me.”

Bane’s strength in the dark is suddenly tied into his back story of growing up in the prison cave.

In our membership Creator Club, we use Circle as a community platform, not Facebook. I’ve been off of Facebook for a few years. I’m inept at that platform, and actively avoid it because of distraction that it creates. So this is the reason for Circle.

I write books, articles, emails, because personally, while I like instagram to connect with friends, et cetera, I don’t like to spend the time on those platforms. Nothing wrong with those that do, but that’s just me.

Plus, I’ve always enjoyed writing.

My desk right now is riddled with yellow paper. 

That’s because my grandfather built a concrete company with a yellow legal pad as his organising tool. Now people have the most complex ‘task management’ tools, even though they don’t necessarily get much done.

Complex is trendy.

Well I kind of counter-trend that and go simple, so that’s the connection to the yellow paper.

Building in those connections with your world creates a lot of depth.

The less ‘random’ you can make it, the more connected and deeper it gets, and the deeper the relationship is that we can have with your business.

Look at the art on your walls. The type of diary you use, how you set up your service. It can all be used as fodder for content and stories.

Making a point of tying things together can be profitable.

Step Three: Create a Unique Language Set

In Tolkein’s work, there’s an entire language set that almost nobody can even understand. He was deep into linguistics, so spent a lot of his time creating new languages for the book.

Richard Garriott did something similar with his games. He created symbols and languages that you could understand in any country, so people could decipher secret scripts and codes in the games.

The addiction level (and money-making ability) of these games was immense.

In my own work, I purposefully make up words, misspell names, and create new concepts. Even the whole world building schtick for service business is really not something that anybody talks about.

But Creators have this whole language set around it: Allied Worlds, Character Building, Magic and Technology, Player Types, et cetera.

In 2020 I interviewed the marketing guru Seth Godin.

He has an ability to come up with new ideas, and tie them to a language set: Purple Cow, Linchpin, Tribes.

These are ideas and concepts that already exist. But he explained them in a way that was compelling, made sense, and was easy for people to take that language and run with it, spreading his ideas further.

In your own business, you also can come up with a new and unique language set.

Start off with just a word or two.

Something you’re already using, that you can amplify and bring out into your world.

Or a secret handshake (side note, one of the businesses we worked with did this very well, building out a whole secret handshake in their gym. We capitalised on it by filming it, then distributing that across content. Engagement skyrocketed in those months, for a few reasons).

Conclusion

The ‘depth’ of your business world ain’t something a lot of people talk about.

It ain’t ‘scalable’. You have to think.

But if you look at the most powerful business worlds over time both past and present, you’ll see they often have an extraordinary level of depth built in.

And you don’t need to wait for your business to be decades old either. 

The founder of Aesop Dennis Paphitis built depth into the Aesop space from day one. Eventually creating a billion dollar company.

The more depth you create, the deeper your clients can go.

You can tie this into your content, your delivery and even your business strategy and offers. And the deeper you are, and the richer your world, the stronger the relationship can be with you and your business, and the stickier your service becomes.

Free Resource: Copywriting Tips

18 tips leaked straight from John's Lair to help you juice up your writing so people actually read it

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Worldbuilding vs. typical marketing tactics - Build a business they seek out

A few years back I was getting into a lot of triathlons. I had no idea, so I appointed myself as a ‘mentee’ under my new friend Pete.

I like to think it wasn’t all self-serving (Pete happened to be a local pro and future world champ). That I created some value for Pete and his friends... But either way, he taught me a lot.

One day we were out on a ride and he was giving me some advice.

Apparently, I was training too hard. Trying to fit in too many sessions each week. I said that I thought that was the point. I was trying to keep up with him.

“No, you want to train ‘easy’. Everyone is training too hard, and going too hard. They get injured, and never reach their potential. You want to go easy.”

I was half way through arguing this, and a few people passed us going up a hill.

I couldn’t help surging a bit to try and catch up with them.

“That’s exactly what I mean!” he laughed at me.

“The goal is to train easy, and get better over time. Your capacity goes up. Your technique gets better. So if you want to rest, you rest. Train the next day.”

In that one conversation, I had gone from someone who knew Pete, to someone who was in his world. I understood how it worked.

Pete created a ‘paradigm shift’ - “Everyone else is training hard, but it ain’t working. Over here we train easy.”

Pete’s world was different. 

His mentors were different.

His food was different.

His schedule was different (with a lot of sleeping)

His whole world was different to any other triathlete.

It was exclusive to him, and the only way you could interact with him and go deeper was to enter his world. In the small biz world, Pete would have been what we call a ‘worldbuilder’.

When we think about marketing, it’s easy to start start with what we’ve got for our service, then ‘add’ marketing tactics.

1. Photoshoots

2. Better video

3. A better website with more SEO

In that traditional process, we also look at our 'positioning,’ or how we sit in the market relative to others.

“They do the service that way. We do the service this way.”

It’s a ‘relative’ way of looking at your business, which compares you to others in your field.

I’m a big coffee drinker. 

And, I’m in the ‘selective’ coffee snob sub-category. So sometimes, if I’m out I’ll even grab one from the service station. One day I saw one of their signs: “All Arabica Beans”. This is because a lot of the cheap places use Robusta, which is even cheaper (albeit stronger).

They also have a big “$1 COFFEE” sign.

‘Relative’ positioning. The beans are a different type. Convenient, and cheaper. That’s the drawcard.

Then they clarify that positioning through the signage.

You might be familiar with the gym space, this same thing happens all the time:

When you go through a mall, you’ll see a 24/7 gym with some kind of sign: “$0 Joining fee, Flexible contract”. So this is more attractive than the gym down the road with the joining fee.

Then if you look at their socials, it reflects this. An effort to clarify that positioning, and make it clear they are the best choice on price. This can happen a lot when a market gets crowded.

But, this is the old way…

Enter the Worldbuilders…

Now we live in the modern economy, people are looking for more.

As buyers, we need to trust businesses at a much deeper level. The alternative to this - a completely different paradigm, is a story-driven approach, where you build a world. Much like my friend Pete did with his ‘world’ of triathlon (a game, that ended up with him winning the title), you create a way for people to enter your world, and go deeper, or ‘advance’ over time.

And get to where they want to go through your service…

Let’s go back to the coffee shops.

LORDS is a local coffee shop in Newcastle. They have great coffee, but nowhere does it say what kind of beans they have. Nowhere do they advertise their low prices (they aren’t low). Instead, they focus on the customer experience. Which, is totally unique. Their content becomes an extension of that experience, with wild, interesting videos that get a lot of attention.

LORDS has a slew of different characters that they bring out.

They have a clear backstory.

They have different products, or ‘magic’, that help you to move forward in the LORDS world and LORDS lifestyle.

[note: Andy Raskin calls new features your ‘magic’ in his narrative building work. This seems very close, but realise that this stuff stems from storytelling, gaming, and fantasy. We have used the term ‘magic’ slightly differently in worldbuilding, typically linked to a character in the service business. So I might have the ‘magic’ of writing. But I can teach you that ‘magic’ through a profitable promise - which is a writing workshop.]

Great coffee is a pre-requisite to thrive as a coffee shop.

But LORDS doesn’t focus on the transaction. They focus on the experience you get when you have the coffee.

In fact, three new coffee shops have opened up right next to them.

But it’s only strengthened their world. As people go to the new shops, they see LORDS, and a percentage of them are intrigued. Once they are hooked on the experience and the relationships they form, they never leave.

And so it is with worldbuilding.

Let’s look at a brief contrast of the typical way of looking at marketing, versus a worldbuilding approach:

Traditional marketing or ‘positioning’:

• “We are here, competition is over there.”

• “Our pricing is X, that’s great value.”

• “We do it this way, they do it that way.”

• Seek more attention through more noise, faster edits et cetera

• “Come to us because it’s worth it, and here’s a discount”

• Here’s a standard testimonial

• This is transactional

Now for something entirely different…

Worldbuilding:

• They are doing this thing, but we think the culture has changed…

• You can tell, and we can tell (supporting facts if needed)

• That’s why we are building this new way of doing things, in a totally new world

• Hello, I’m John, I started this thing - This is who I am, this is my experience and personality. (A character in the world.)

• This is my profitable promise - how we help you, it’s the ‘magic’ in our world.

• Here are some details of our world. Some will surprise you. They exist because they’re cool, and part of our culture.

• And this is what the future looks like that we want to build. It’s different.

• We are selling the vision and the ability to play in this world, the lifestyle it creates, and the type of person you become, not just our offer that helps you solve a problem.

• But if you’d like to join, here’s how you can buy

• This offer can solve your problem and help you advance in the world.

• When you get a win, we will help you celebrate. In fact, that’s a big chunk of our content.

Yes, the world solves a problem. You need your expertise...

But, we are building around the experience, not just the transaction.

And there’s a lot more attention to detail.

This is not unlike the online gaming culture.

In his book Explore/Create, Richard Garriott talks about how in his early online version of Ultima, he was surprised how many people became online friends, and even got married, after having a shared experience of the gameplay. In one situation, there was a group of twelve people that played together. Suddenly one of them didn’t log in for a few days. They didn’t know where this guy lived in real life. But they eventually found out that he died. They were distraught. This is the power of a strong ‘world’, and similar mission. The mission, the world, and the characters have as much value as the actual point of the game.

Let’s look at a couple of business examples

The first one is Gene Simmons, and his KISS world.

I know, this ain’t a service business. Or, is it? In Simmon’s empire, he has all kinds of businesses, including financial services. And all of them are tied in to his character, that he created on purpose.

Let’s take a look at what he did (I highly recommend his books)

• He decided he wanted to be ‘big’

• He looked around, and saw that the American culture had changed, and was craving something exciting

• He built his new way of doing things - changed his name, came up with the costumes, and the flames, and the performances

• They became the band ‘KISS’ and trademarked the faces

• Their shows were consistently over the top. If you come, you will be blown away.

• The merchandise became ways to affiliate with the band (and world)

• They started selling different ways to play in the KISS world

• People even went over the top and got tattoos et cetera

• KISS and Gene Simmons related products are like any others, and you can buy into the magic in 158 different ways…

To be honest, Simmons built a universe, not just a ‘world’. And it was so unique that people started to copy him, hence the trademarking of the face paint…

But a ‘world’ doesn’t have to be so big.

Maybe you’re a solopreneur. Let’s look at one woman we work with, Amy, who is building Warrior School, a training approach for women.

• Women are trying to exercise to get a result all kinds of ways

• But the culture has changed. We are more stressed now, plus, we have more information now (new information)

• You can tell, and I can tell (in fact, Amy shares how she ‘used’ to train the other way)

• More: here are supporting facts about women and training…

• That’s why I am building this new way of training to get better results. It is based on more fluid training style, and health. I’m an evangelist for this style of training!

• Hello, I’m Amy, I started this - this is who I am, here’s a whole bunch of my personality

• This is my profitable promise - I’ll teach you the magic you need to get strong, feel good and have a body you love

• Here are some details (‘world building’ across podcast episodes)

• This is what the future looks like when we train this way

• I’m passionate about this training, not just my offer. I want more people to have this lifestyle.

• But if you want help, here’s how you can go deeper in my world.

• This offer is part of my magic

• We all will celebrate your wins (here are some wins of the other women doing it this way).

Once your world is clear, and you are playing your own game, you get to choose the marketing tactics…

Whether you do instagram reels, or tiktok, is not as important as the underlying story, and where you are taking your customers.

This is what the world is build on, this is what we seek out, and where trust is built.

More:

Now your pricing can be independent. As a customer I’m not paying for a similar service that I can get somewhere else, I’m paying to be immersed in this world and go deeper (advance in the world).

How this can go wrong…

Let’s wrap up with some traps we see come up:

If the world doesn’t stand for anything. This is a common flaw, and no amount of social media tactics can save this. The world has to be ‘about’ something, because that’s why it exists. This means in one sense, it’s exclusive (and we can’t get anything like this elsewhere).

When the world is too available, or too open to feedback. Imagine reading The Lord of The Rings books, then half way along, there was a poll, where Tolkien asked the readers what “should” happen… It would completely destroy the story. Sure we want to be listening to customers, but our job as a world builder is to surprise them, and create new and deeper experiences

When characters in the world have a different idea on what it’s about. This is big if you have a team. The characters must be aligned on why the world exists, or else the world will cease to exist. The stakes are high here.

If you don’t have a way to go ‘deeper’. Let’s say you just use social media for marketing. Well… that’s not your world technically. That’s Zuckerberg’s world. So what you need is a place for people to go deeper with your marketing, ideally before they buy. We recommend an email list. And you can ‘reward’ readers on your list by taking them deeper into new things.

When the world ain’t ‘rich’ enough. In your world, you can develop language, tools, magic, and ‘inside’ ways to talk about what you do. This should be totally different to anyone else’s world.

Because you’re still ‘chasing’. Sending DM’s to prospects, running around doing things for free. Discounting. With world building, your goal is to clarify your message, and then amplify exposure to that message and world. Then at each exposure point, create opportunities for people to go deeper (join my email list).

With a lot of lazy, or more tactical marketing or positioning, you would see how your service fits in ‘relative’ to your industry.

They do this / We do this, at this better price.

Well, the bet is there is no longer a safe ‘positioning’ practice like this. The game has changed and we now seek a much deeper level of trust. You can no longer enter a market, with a slightly cheaper service.

Or a slightly faster service…

Or be a bit more convenient, or helpful, and survive…

People want to immerse themselves in your world, understand your culture, and go deep, before they buy. And then, they often want to buy more from you, to go deeper over time.

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How to write mouth-watering articles to create a website they don’t want to leave, and turn readers into raving fans (and even clients!)

(See the bottom to download as PDF)

When I first started hashing out posts and content for business and websites in 2017, I kept getting stuck on what to write. I knew I wanted ‘more’ than posting on social media, but I didn’t have a clear vision of what that could look like.

I’d get distracted, then my site would sit there, with just a few articles or blog posts on it.

Maybe you’ve felt this?

What stops us from really creating a meaningful body of work that can help us grow our business?

Is it fear?

Lack of confidence?

What about when we don’t have a clear system in place to make sure the process is worthwhile?

My first exposure to the world of articles was back in the Wild West online fitness world circa 2009.  Back then I was into all of the paleo fitness gurus, and intermittent fasting et cetera. I used to nerd out on the latest blog, going deep into nutrition and training topics.

The Westside Barbell site was another one. I’d spend hours scouring the site when I was getting into strength training, trying to learn everything I could from Louie Simons’ articles and books.

Later, I learned a lot from Sean D’Souza, a marketer in New Zealand. I saw his site, and was blown away with how deep and ‘sticky’ it was - to the point where I just kept coming back to see how he structured it all.

All of this led to me starting to pound out emails, longer articles and even a book (with more coming).

When people visit your site and see a lot of helpful content, it leads to one of three outcomes:

1. They get stuck into an article and read the whole thing

2. They bounce, but realise that you have a huge amount of articles and resources there on the site, they make a mental note to come back later

3. They are repelled, because they don’t like going deep, or helpful information

All of these are good outcomes.

(You probably don’t want to work with the last group of people anyway).

The other thing, is the longer form stuff can really help you to grow your email list, because you’re kind of ‘leading’ with generosity, and then you can link hyper-relevant opt-ins to the back of your articles, so people know exactly where to go to sign up to get more of your stuff.

If you’re keen to set up your own articles, and build your own sticky website that helps turn readers into raving fans, and even clients, start with these steps.

1 - Make sure you are clear on your business ‘vertical’, then branch out

Your ‘vertical’ is your specific area of focus for your business. 

For us, it’s business coaching for coaches and creative businesses.

This sounds obvious, but when you know what your focus is with your business and how you help people, you spend time and energy writing about stuff that’s actually helpful.

What I’ve found is, when I wasn’t been clear on this, I’ll would write about all kinds of things that got off topic. And just because I was interested in something at the time, doesn’t mean the relevant reader was. 

(Obvious in hindsight…)

Start by making sure you’re clear on your ‘vertical’ and then you can branch outwards.

EXAMPLE:

I recently met a woman in the bookkeeping business. She has strong revenue at about $45k per month, but when she came in, she had low profit. She wants to focus on the real estate segment, where she can help agency owners clean up their books, make more money and be better prepared for the future, plus save money on the front end by not hiring admin.

This would be her new ‘vertical’ - Bookkeeping, finance, and back end practices for business growth, for established realtors.

From there, she can branch outwards, and look at specific activities they do, or problems these guys have.

Writing helpful articles on these areas for her website could be part of a positioning strategy to become known in this new area, and create a site that is much ‘stickier’ for these new clients.

Let’s go more specific with another example.

Say you’re a strength coach who does online training for guys with more of a ‘power’ focus. So that’s your ‘vertical.’

But that’s still way too general to actually write about. You don’t want general articles. You want to go specific, so that what you write about resonates deeper. So you ‘branch out’ from here to go narrow, contextual, and wrap your ‘world’ and ‘character’ around it.

So to branch out, let’s look at exactly what some of your clients might be doing in their day to day, seeing that training could be their number one key passion.

You could write on:

1. What to look out for when you get your first first ‘online’ strength program

2. Developing ‘power’ versus strength (if that’s relevant)

3. How to change to a new coach when you realise your last one sucks

4. Using a remote program in the gym without obsessively looking at your phone for the workouts

5. Filming lifts for remote feedback and not feeling like a tool

6. Staying motivated when there’s nobody there in person to train with you

7. Buying workout gear that doesn’t look lame

8. Supplements that can help you stay healthy as you train through winter

9. Mindset strategies to break through specific plateaus

And more. You could probably do 30 - 40 topics on here pretty easily.

You can see how we’re going ‘outwards’ from the main vertical, to surround the topic with sub topics.

So then you can be specific, and bring your world and stories into it. (This is exactly what I’ve done with this article)

2 - Deploy the supreme power of entertainment

Before small business, I was an engineering nerd.

To do well, I had to learn all kinds of engineering speak, and submit big, technical theses on different aerospace topics.

All of a sudden when I owned the gym and started doing content, I had to de-train all this engineering speak. I had to lighten up my content. I would write articles for the gym, and it would be all dark and gloomy and heavy. I needed to have like a checklist, to check for some jokes, and make sure the whole thing wasn’t too ‘coach-speak’.

Otherwise it was boring.

I don’t think I’m the only one here. It’s easy to write articles from the high horse. This is why so many people are worried about the AI stuff right now, because they are used to speaking directly to a topic, rather that around the topic and entertaining as well. AI is just going to destroy this kind of dull content.

And this is where all the storytelling kind of came into it for me.

I realised stories and jokes are a great way to lighten things up, and entertain so that people can stay with you, and you can get the response you want. This ain’t new. You can go back one hundred years, and see direct response copywriters using this. John Caples was a great example. He had an ad for a music school course, with the famous headline: “They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I began to play…!” And it was all story, entertaining the reader, and a super successful ad.

You can see this also in the coaching industry if you really look at who does well.

The big players are entertainers.

I mean Tony Robbins, the dude basically came up unqualified, but created huge celebrity around himself, and then had the fire walking thing which was his signature ‘show.’ There’s even a quote from the guy:

“It’s not the Information Age, it’s the entertainment age.”

Great coaches, great creatives - if you know about ‘em, they are most likely entertainers, storytellers, people who can speak, write and hold attention while they do it.

In my experience, if you just give ‘value’ all the time, you get crushed.

So the way I think about this is the 80/20 rule.

80% story or entertainment, 20% insight.

I remember when I was little getting a ride into school, and someone would have the morning radio show on. Even if they had some expert in there, I remember thinking man they just talk crap. Basically they just entertain. Back and forth… Then a little bit of insight. It’s the same with mainstream media, if you think about it. Entertainment can be fear and tension as well. But basically it’s more to do with the banter and the drama than it is to do with being a teacher in front of a classroom.

And that was a huge shift for me and for most people. Most are out here doing 90-100% education or insight, with zero entertainment, recording it into super-coach-speak facebook lives, and wondering why the hell it ain’t getting’ any engagement or converting.

I don’t know any quick solution here, because you’ve got to find your voice and loosen up.

Personally, I have a bit of a copywriting checklist to go back through once the article is done… Is this too heavy on coach-speak? Are there enough jokes? Are there enough stories? 

If I need to lighten up the article, I go away, loosen up, then come back and finish it.

Ideally I have fun writing the articles, and laugh at my own stuff.

3 - Use the articles as a bridge in your world (and help readers become raving fans and clients)

Articles can get lost on a site. If you’re not careful, they fall into some kind of dark hole on the internet.

And if you see this happening to you, you’ll quit writing completely, because it looks like a hopeless waste of time. Why put stuff out there that nobody reads?

Exactly. You shouldn’t. You want it to be time well spent that can grow your biz.

So the alternative is to create a ‘web’. An ecosystem that includes your articles, your social media, and then your email opt ins.

So basically the way this ‘web’ works is:

1. Write the core article, by branching ‘outwards’ from your vertical (area of business).

2. Put out social media posts that point to the article (no, not just one. Do multiple)

3. At the bottom of the article, have a pop up, or embedded email sign up.

(You can do this same process with a podcast).

So your articles are a ‘bridge’ for people to go to your email list, rather than trying to get people to jump on your list straight away (“a ‘leap’ that can be too far.”)

And you get exposure to your crafty articles from social media or other sources.

What if you don’t have social media? Well my friend, you need to find other entry points to the articles. 

• See if you can get your articles up on other people’s sites.

• Ask friends with similar businesses if they want some articles for their weekly or monthly business newsletters

• Mention your articles on podcasts - either your own, or when you go on as a guest

• Publish your articles on other sites with more traffic (medium-dot-com, et cetera. You can still link to your opt-in on the back end)

• The more obvious one - start up some social media channels that suit your market, and publish the articles to there for free

Articles are a great way to take people deeper into your world, add value, and show that you actually know what you’re doing. And the over-arching goal with them should always be bring your readers and audience to a deeper level of your world, at all times.

So remember to include an opt-in spot at the bottom (or as you go down) the page. 

This gives people a chance to get a relevant PDF, quiz, video, or other opt in as they go. And gives you a way to speak to them over time, to build a relationship, give value, and share offers they might want to buy.

There you have it, enjoy your article writing success.

(Download as PDF here)

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