When to bring out the story of your business
Last week I had a first conversation with a very talented artist who does mostly sculpture.
He wants to bring his work out to the world in a big way.
At first, I was wary about even meeting. Because while he sells his art, and we’ve worked with artists, art is very different from services, consulting or coaching businesses that we normally work with.
“Basically, I’m going through a big project. New website. A showing in a gallery end of next year. I have spoken to the website lady, and we both agree I need to find a good photographer and videographer. I heard that you do story or narrative work and help people clarify the copywriting… Personally, I think this needs to go first. Surely we should clarify the story before we do the site and photography? Because the story will inform everything else?”
Most businesses start out in the traditional route:
They pick a niche
They create an offer they want to sell the niche
They use ‘storytelling’ as a marketing tactic afterward
Story-driven businesses that thrive in the new economy (short on trust and saturated with options)… take a different path:
They identify a story and compelling world
A psychographic resonates with the story (the niche self-selects)
They use small (and big) offers to help people live out that story
In the old way, businesses try to ‘target’ a niche.
And then make claims how they’re different or better.
As markets get more crowded people start to ignore claims.
Now, the ‘niche’ is attracted naturally to the business story.
And invests with the business to get support in the transformation.
While this is obvious with services (“making law simple”, “helping women get in the best shape of their lives at any age”, “business coaching…”)
On the surface, it’s different for art.
But is it really?
As we talked through his work, we learned that the whole reason he got into sculpture (at 50+ years old), was grounded in a story of connecting with parts of the land, and with the human form.
One option for the ‘story’ - He is bringing an organic ‘humanity’ back into the limelight in a digitised world.
That certainly isn’t going to be the final narrative.
In fact, we’ll throw that away if we move ahead, probably.
Because something much deeper may emerge.
But even off the cuff ideas like that can show how ’story’ is the strategy not just for businesses that thrive, but for art, and other creative pursuits.
And of course, he is correct.
The story ideally comes before everything, and informs the video guy, site builder… And entire internal team as well.
Frankly, this rarely happens.
Most businesses come to us with an offer and a bit of a marketing ‘problem’ (that feels like confused messaging), and then we start to bring out their world and story so their audience can engage. And when they see this it kind of re-invents what the whole idea of marketing looks like for them.
This is natural, probably.
Usually when people start a business, they are just thinking about getting clients.
Rather than clarifying the overarching business story for a long term business that resonates.
The Unnamed Storm
I want to start off with something. And that is this. If this email means nothing to you, if it seems to be answering a question you never asked, just skip it. Don’t bother with it at all.
There are certain things in small business, that can be understood from the outside, even when you’re not involved in anything business related. But there are a lot of things that can’t be understood until you’ve gone a certain distance along the business road.
And so it is with the topic of today: the Unnamed Storm.
Just the other day, a chap was explaining to me over a zoom call, how he’d just come out of a three month ‘funk’ in not just business.
But in life altogether.
His mood had been off.
He wasn’t himself around family.
He was training heavy (too heavy, he suggested?), but it wasn't fun.
He asked if I’d had such a thing before?
I shared with him a particularly dark period - that I haven’t shared with too many before - which was in my last year or so of owning our gym in Melbourne. Although, those circumstances had nothing to do with it, probably. Because the strange part of this harrowing period, is nothing was technically ‘wrong.’
I was married to my beautiful wife.
Our business was going well.
I was training and generally pretty healthy.
But for one stinking-hot Melbourne Summer in particular, it’s like each day was shrouded in a sheet of black haze that completely blocked the sun. I was impatient (even more than normal), and my mood was through the floor…
Even when good things would happen!
Eventually, it seeped into our marriage, and things got pretty dire.
And my productivity in my work was diabolical at times.
Now most people that I’ve met, at least in small business circles, have experienced something like this before. Inexplicable darkness, apathy, and disinterest in the world around them.
I’ve spoken to countless business owners who have gotten so far into this…
That they often want to walk away from their business altogether, thinking it's the root of the problem.
While my views on it have shifted a lot now and are much more religious in nature - which I won’t go into here both due to lack of credentials in that arena, and lack of time - at the time, there's seemingly no cause for these times.
They are like an Unnamed Storm.
They sit off the coast, and hammer you with their gale force winds. And you’re not sure why, for how long.
You have little motivation, and, even less clarity.
Regular ‘tools’ and ‘strategies’ seem to be futile in the face of the winds.
I dare say this is probably not too helpful so far. The only thing I can offer - without diving into the spiritual side of it - is that these storms seem to come before periods of change. A big learning, a levelling up…
Or even…
An outright shift in your identity!
And you may not see it at the time (my experience is you rarely do), but around the corner, if you can break out of it, there’s a different identity, or person that you’re becoming. Which is coupled with a slightly different assignment in business, or in life.
Which was certainly the case for me.
It's almost as if the Unnamed Storm strikes some of us when we’re not living in alignment with who we really are, and what we’re really here to do.
Which isn’t to say it’s always a matter of changing a business or moving.
In many cases, it’s simply meant stepping into something with more authority. Or casting off something that I’ve been holding on to.
Anyway, if you’re getting hit by the Unnamed Storm right now...
And things are hard for you, or you don’t know what’s next for your business...
Stay the course.
Business is hard.
And have faith.
Faith is infinitely more important than clarity, which is always so fleeting, and it can help you listen for cues on where to go next.
It might take time, but you will come out the other side, and see what needs to be done.
Grow with less, but better
There’s a point in every business owner’s journey where you realise you’re doing way too much.
And for a period, it felt great.
But activity can be a seductive liar.
Usually, this comes from an overload of all kinds of ideas and information from the internet and books.
The late Gary Halbert called this “carbonised crap” in your mind. Because what happens is you get so many inputs of information and trainings that your brain gets completely filled with junk that you think you have to do… And soon, your skull is full, and all that information starts to ‘carbonise’, or go hard like a diamond under pressure. Eventually, you walk around in your business, doing a million things at once, speaking a million miles an hour and smiling like a Cheshire Cat with a noticeable gleam in your eye. But the gleam isn’t happiness, it’s the light reflecting off of all the carbonised crap that goes into your head.
You find yourself in a trap. Where you’re ‘doing’ constantly.
And yes, you can still grow like that.
After the allure of busyness fades, you begin to feel like there’s no end in sight.
The alternative path to growth - doing less, better.
One pattern I noticed very quickly in my own businesses and with every client, was the more successful the business was, the more time off the person had. A month back, I met a guy Rob who coaches accountants. He’s built a multi-million dollar business at over seventy percent profit. And last year he worked a mere 321 days all year.
Sheesh.
Anyway, I’m going to share with you three ways you can start to do ‘less’ this month, and still grow. But before I do, realise that there is a big identity shift that has to happen to do this.
True story:
I worked with a successful physiotherapist for a while. She grew her business from zilch. Pretty soon she was making decent money. But she was starting to feel burned out. I pointed out how much easier it might be if she had some help. But she was adamant that she would never have a big team, et cetera.
The identity she started the business with was ‘practitioner’, not leader.
Frankly?
I understand that. I’ve had decent teams before, and I prefer to keep it lean as well.
Anyway, she eventually made some hires, first for admin, then another couple practitioners.
Soon?
She hit record numbers and record profit, and took a big holiday to Africa.
But the ‘big deal’ in that shift - and you’ll know this if you’ve been there - ain’t the technicalities of the hire - it’s the willingness to let go, and become the leader who trains and leads a powerful team on the mission. It’s a whole different identity, not just a different set of actions.
We have an identity upgrade to work on, if we want to change how the business feels as we grow.
That said, there are three things you can focus on for the next month if you want this ‘easier’ kind of growth.
No.1 - Simplify and streamline
Cut unnecessary crap and extra complexity.
The number of meetings you have, offers you’re running, or the number of marketing platforms you’re trying to uphold as a new business.
Couple weeks back I sat down with a client and mapped out a big campaign with three offers.
At the end of the day we were out for a walk, and as we were talking we realised we could delete the offer in the middle. This probably saved 50 hours of staff time, plus a whole bunch of complexity with marketing and sales.
The end solution was much cleaner.
But to get there, we had to cut through the limiting belief that you need ‘more’ to grow.
No.2 - Leverage systems and people
This is about having the right people in your business so that your business works for you.
If you’re earlier in the journey, and there ain’t anyone else on your team, then it’s about systems.
And that’s really a complex way of saying that you need a rhythm, with simple steps to follow, in order to do stuff.
A great one to look at is marketing, for example.
Marketing works really well with a monthly rhythm when you’re new. Each month, at a certain time, you can run a campaign. Maybe it’s a webinar, or product announcement, or email.
Well now that you know that, you can set up the steps for the campaign.
And it’s much easier to prepare and execute.
Most early businesses struggle to get a rhythm going, because they have too much stuff going on. Then when the team comes in, the chaos is amplified through more people.
No.3 - Focus on your composure, not just your revenue
How you choose to show up in your business is part of your identity shift.
When your business is set up well, it’s still going to take a bunch of work…
But you’ll be able to show up with some amount of ease and it ain’t going to feel like a grind.
Part of that thought is deciding to sit down to work with a level of grace and authority.
You aren’t a cog in your own wheel that’s about to grind itself into dust.
You’re a leader and a composer of an intentional business that brings value to the world.
Every business will have periods of intense output and work.
As well as periods that are more stable and predictable.
But neither of those are correlated with how you feel in the work that you do. You can grow through these by drinking the hustle culture cool-aid. Or, you can grow through these in a way that’s a little more relaxed and even fun, while you do less, better.
Focus on these three for a month or two and you may be surprised at what can happen.
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11 Marketing Trends for 2025
A little late on this one.
Still, worth putting it on the record, so we can kick back at the end of the year and see how it all panned out.
The theme under most of these is an extension of the last couple years:
Trust is extremely low.
And burnout and fatigue is high. Which means it’s hard for businesses to feel creative.
The plus side?
It means your audience’s radar for quality and depth is extremely high.
(Just today, Ruby was saying how they’re putting on another Dinner Club in March. Which is a private event for women. And the uptake has been very fast. I also just saw a local gym sold out a very unique event for the second year in a row too. People are hungry, for good stuff.)
OK, Here we go:
1 - Sell by chat, chat bots, fast call booking funnels, nurture sequences and other front end tactics will become less effective.
People will also start to notice the difference in client lifetime value based on *how* the person come into your world, with outreach and bots being lower quality entry points. Clients that enter your world on their terms will stay for longer and get better results.
2 - Interest overlap marketing and brand building will be more effective.
One example of this is the Dinner Club stuff that Ruby and Emilia created that I mentioned above. Small events, that aren't directly related to their service. They’re done purely with the guest in mind. So that women can get together for a dinner and meet each other. Another example I saw was an accountant writing children’s books, that infused some basic stuff about money in them. Not the main offer. But excellent brand building.
3 - Long form written content will outperform for some audiences.
If you haven’t seen the email, Substack and article space already surging, again, then it’s worth checking out. (Substack users grew almost 50% in only five months in 2023/2024. My guess? That growth has and will continue). Long form content - like this article - has one big advantage, it helps you build trust at levels that just ain’t possible in posts and reels.
4 - Written copy in Instagram stories will keep doing well.
It’s a pattern interrupt, and offers a private moment with the creator that leads to conversations… Almost feels like a ‘rest’.
5 - Live events to play an even stronger role in brand building, if not direct marketing and sales.
Whether for coaches and consultants, service providers or even retail - getting people together in a room solves the trust issue a lot faster, and also creates a sense of belonging and community. We'll also be seeing some smart, unexpected collaborative marketing this year, bringing unique business worlds together.
6 - AI will be important but not just how people think.
Sure it’ll help a few with productivity et cetera. But also it’ll play a role in driving people away from social media. And make the trust deficit bigger. When you go to an event, or read a book or long form article (say Substack), there’s what it is - written copy with personality - and what it isn’t - it's a break from short videos of people and businesses promoting themselves. AI will be helpful in parts, but we’re going to actively look for places to go that are less clogged with AI too.
7 - World Building is more important.
But back-story and origin story type of content will play a smaller role in marketing narratives. Why? Because demonstration, and sharing relevant slices of life and your ‘world’, as you go, builds the relationship. Which is the goal. Backstory became a ‘hack’ that social media content creators exploited, and is not as relevant as what’s happening now.
8 - The era of quality:
Leather bound books, quality clothing, quality of coaching, quality coffee, quality onboarding programs, quality programs with cool merch. Some deeper thought is going to be required to come up with really good stuff that people are missing in this post-modernist, minimalist hangover. Warning - when you do the work to think deeper, expect others to replicate what you did.
9 - It’s going to be harder for consultants, coaches and mentors to sell stuff with only short form content (audience trust issues).
Making consistent long form marketing or live events key.
10 - ‘Depth’ is attractive.
Depth of expertise in your service, depth of thinking, depth of world. Surface level stuff is everywhere, but depth can’t be faked. The value of depth for the audience is that it both offers a paradigm shift, and helps them in identity transformations. It’s also more attractive for the businesses, because it creates resilience and stability as you grow (rather than growing through more sales of a shallow offer).
There are a bunch of ways to create more depth. One of the easiest? Research, demonstrate and share more specifics and details of your world and craft. Most marketing, goes to a surface level, that’s already covered by other podcasts and experts. But if you can go deeper, and more specific, then it’s easier to stand out.
11 - There’s a growing gap between ‘content’, and ‘content that matters’.
Regular content ain’t worth much, anymore. Partly because of supply and demand. Content that matters, is worth a bunch. Often, the difference is timeliness. For example I've tried re-sending an email from a year ago that originally went great, only for it to bomb second time round. Find out what your audience is thinking about ‘today’, rather than last year, and engagement will jump.
Look, only time will tell.
And either way, the world is on offer for those that show up for it.
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The Creative World Building Mindset
Any business owner can create a deeper world that’s more unique. And, one of the characteristics of someone who will do well with a ‘world building’ approach to business versus someone who likes the idea, but would do better simply following industry tactics, is that the world builder is seldom afraid to try something that’s new to them.
Furthermore, they’ll almost always be happy to do do something that might be new for their entire industry. In fact, they often have a disdain for business tactics used by their their market. This may be because they have a lack of trust in the masses. Or, they may not be interested in climbing the same ladder of popularity of their industry. They also tend to have a high self concept, through years of getting results. This means they’re looking for ways to buck the trend. And do things their way.
In simple terms, if a business owner can’t come up with an idea. Flesh it out. And present it to the market in something as simple as an email, resource, or a social media post, they won’t be able to build a unique world.
If nothing else, their overthinking at each check-point will run so high that they’ll be exhausted before they get any traction. And will fall back into a tactical, or even passive way of thinking. Or stalling.
To build a different kind of business, or more unique world, you have to be OK with people rejecting you.
By going a different path, you’re going against at least some of the status quo.
So you can’t care too much about what other people think.
In fact, if we pick any business that’s not following the crowd, and building a highly addictive world, you can see this in their face straight away.
They have an ‘edge’. They’re focused on doing good work in the way that they see as best.
They aren’t hedging.
And in many cases, it’s much more. They’re putting on a show. They realise that as you flesh out your business and bring your offers and service to the people, you don’t just need a skillset, you need to turn that skillset into a performance.
Any business can create a deeper world. But those who excel often have a certain look to them. They’re on a mission. you can see it in someone’s face. It’s not a faked nonchalance. But a real focus on the mission rather than caring too much about what others think.
This also forges a confidence that can’t be faked.
Building a unique or creative business world is a totally different way of thinking than following an exact template of someone else who’s popular right now. Like any good business it’s driven from a mission to help people and make a difference.
But it’s backed by a lack of hesitation.
The creator never hesitates because the right time is always now. The mission must move on.
Clarifying Your Persona lululemon Style
While back, after Ruby left her job in architecture, she got a role at lululemon for a while.
She started at a store in Sydney. Then when we moved to Melbourne and opened a gym, she shifted to one down there. I was even an ambassador for the store when I owned the gym. Although, I didn’t do the best job of it in hindsight, mostly sticking to myself and our gym community, rather than getting ‘out and about’ like a socialite in the clothes, like I should have.
Anyway, whether you’re into yoga or athletic apparel or not, there are some great insights for small biz.
For example:
The level of community ‘happenings’ that they created (very similar to Red Bull’s strategy, and something that can be replicated by service businesses) was massive. More, the focus on processes and feedback helped keep the quality obscenely high.
But one of the biggest things is the relentless focus on one clear ‘persona.’
I remember being blown away by how strict they were on this at the start.
Sometimes I would hear staff say things like “Ocean wouldn’t like that…” or “That’s how Ocean wants it” (more on ‘Ocean’ later)…
And it may just be my own personal opinions, but I found this was a much bigger focus in the early days, before they ousted the founder Chip Wilson by painting him as the villain.
Either way, in Chip’s book ‘The Story of lululemon’, you can get the full context for how he came up with the persona.
And how it absolutely drove the early success of the biz.
A lot of take-aways for coaches, who regularly refuse to do this persona work.
Who often like to ‘help everyone’.
Or just ‘put stuff out there’ and hope for the best.
But as they say, if you create something for everyone, you create it for no-one. You can be ‘inclusive’ in some senses, but you need to remain exclusive in some way. Culture is made up of different world views (many of them opposing), so if you’re not sure who you’re for or who you’re not ‘for’, then you get stuck in the mediocre middle.
lululemon was started in Canada, by a guy named Chip Wilson.
Prior to that, Chip had built another apparel company, Westbeach, focusing more on snowboarding and skateboarding.
He’d sold that, and started lululemon at 42 years old, but had a ton of insight to kick it off.
One of the first things that he did was get clear on his persona.
…[I would focus on]… a specific market segment that had never before existed. This market segment was the 24 - 35 year old woman who was single or engaged, had no children, was highly educated, media-savvy, athletic, and professional. These women travelled, owned their own condos, earned $80,000 a year and were very stylish…”
Wilson tapped into a pre-existing cultural narrative that was tied into this demographic:
“I believe this entire pool of women would be untapped by other businesses because the prevailing thought was still “why risk investing in a female employee if she could just leave our business at age 24 to start a family?”
Chip talks about how his persona, the Supergirl (later called ‘Ocean’), even spent her childhood:
“As youngsters, I suspect these girls were influenced by Saturday morning cartoons, which traditionally featured men wearing capes and stretch fabric outfits, running around and saving the world. By the ’80’s, most of these cartoons now included a female superhero - also wearing tight, stylish, form-fitting suits and capes. I felt these powerful cartoon women became iconic to these girls, who were doing what most adolescents and teenagers do: dressing in a manner opposite to their mothers. They did not need to look like boys or men to compete with them; cartoon superheroes were depicted as equal. I called this market segment the Super Girls.”
Chip Wilson defined the Super Girls (named ‘Ocean’) as follows:
*32 years old and born on the 28th of September
*Ocean never got a day older or younger, she was always 32 (i.e. They didn’t ‘change’ the persona)
*Every ‘Ocean’ in the world would be the sponsored athlete. If lululemon couldn’t make the ‘Ocean’s’ excited about their product, then the rest of the market wouldn’t be excited either.
*For 22 year old female uni grads, their utopia was to become ‘Ocean’ - a fit 32 year old with an amazing career and great health.
*Ocean travelled for business and pleasure, and owned her own condo, and had a cat
*Because she had a good job, Ocean could afford quality, and would pay up to 3x regular pricing for that quality
*Above everything else, Ocean valued time. She liked Yoga, because it was close to home, gave an endorphin rush, kept them fit and was mentally calming
*Ocean had disposable income, devotion to health, organic food, and athletics.
*She was waiting on average 4-8 years longer to have babies than the previous generation.
*Ocean would tend to buy fewer, better-quality wardrobe staples, because she was investing in her wardrobe
Et cetera.
The gist is, Chip knew who he was creating for, and who he was selling to.
He knew the story going on in her mind, and where she wanted to go.
And all of this created key extensions that influenced the brand. For example, because Ocean valued time, she would want to wear well designed clothes not just in the gym, but also those same clothes to go shopping, go for coffee, or drop kids off (his words). And the clothing had to look good.
“I also knew if the product didn’t cosmetically enhance a woman’s image of herself, she wouldn’t care about quality or technology.”
Once Chip had ‘met’ his ideal customer, or ‘Persona’, at least theoretically, he got them into a room, to do deeper research.
Now, as I said before, we could go on and on. But the main thing - and this came from seeing Ruby at work, and watching the whole thing - was that every decision, event, or experience was designed for Ocean (and later then male persona, ‘Duke’).
Was it successful?
Well, lululemon eventually became the third most profitable chain of retail stores globally (behind Apple and Tiffany’s). They had a rabid fan base, and were wildly successful.
Eventually, Chip was given the boot.
The people on the board painted him as the villain, and pushed him out, not too different to the late Steve Jobs the first time ‘round at Apple.
And since then, you could argue that the the ‘Ocean’ and ‘Duke’ persona’s have shifted, or, at a minimum, broadened.
Nevertheless, it’s still a great example to see how starting with your persona, and their core values is key, and gives some ideas as to how deep we can go with this stuff.
Who do you serve?
How do they want to feel?
And…
Who do they want to become?
This persona work is the ‘step zero’ in our business story framework, and helps set up everything else in the business.
Something to think about.
Believability and finding the ‘tone’ of your marketing
Well, here I am in my office, it’s particularly early this morning and I’m in between books, so I looked over some old copies of Gary Halbert’s ‘Boron Letters’ as I had my coffee.
If you’ve never seen these, you can get ‘em straight from the internet, and they’re a series of letters the late copywriter Gary Halbert wrote to his son Bond, from the Boron Penitentiary.
If you’re into writing, or copywriting, my guess is you’ll learn more from studying the Halbert Letters than almost any book about how to actually do copywriting!
Anyway, in one of the final letters, (I think it was around letter 25, I’m not sure because the top was cut off of the last few when I printed them), he talks a little bit about believability in copy.
The other day I was watching a video from a guy that owns a gym.
He was showing this acrobatic flying kick, and saying how anyone could do this acrobatic trick, if they just followed these ‘three steps’. What’s the problem with that kind of message? Exactly! It might be true in some sense, but it ain’t believable. A lot of people know they couldn’t even do step one (which was a basic jump).
So ‘believability’ isn’t just about the results of your service (we’ve talked about setting up a success story the ‘right’ way before), but also the general receptiveness to your message.
And when you are more ‘believable’, people can understand how you help them, and find it easier to work with you.
Well, in letter 25 (I think it was 25), Halbert talks about one way to create believability, is to give exact details.
For example, if your service is with car owners, instead of saying “most car owners”, you say “77.6% of car owners.” Instead of “you can lose lots of weight” write “and the average reported weight loss over a 31-day period was 37.5 pounds for men and 26.3 pounds for women.”
Of course you need to know the subject at a much deeper level, but it’s more believable.
Also, did you notice when I talked about which letter he wrote this I was specific to letter 25 in the brackets? Hopefully you didn’t notice at the time, because that’s part of the writing style. But that’s a little detail that makes it more specific, and if you don’t know me, this can help create a connection.
So one way to create believability is to use specifics.
Another way to create believability is to not use broad claims. There’s a coffee shop outside of town I go past sometimes when I drive north to go spearfishing. There’s a big, haggard sign out the front, with the words “the best coffee in town”. It’s a pretty ghetto looking shop, and I could be wrong, but I highly doubt it’s the best coffee in town, or else I would have heard about it, having lived here for four years!
It’s the same with luxury goods. One time I was with Ruby in a Hermés shop in Sydney. You have to line up to go in there. And you know what? There’s no claims anywhere in a Hermés shop. Imagine if they had a big sign up saying something like “the highest quality belts”, or “luxury goods”! That would be a sure way to signal that it ain’t luxury.
So avoiding claims is a great way to increase believability (for a service business? Use success stories instead).
Now the one I really wanted to cover today, is ‘tone’.
Have you noticed since the start of this article, there’s a certain tone to it? It’s easy to read, right? Hopefully you didn’t notice as you went, because again, that’s part of the style. But what I do is I match the ‘tone’ that I would have when I’m talking to you at the dinner table. Or the breakfast table in this case because it was so early. Or we’re training together at the gym. Whatever.
The idea here is that I want to have a ‘tone’ that meets you where you’re at.
Imagine you walk into a café, and you grab a seat next to someone because the rest of the seats are taken, and you decide to talk to them, so you start yelling, or talking really fast all of a sudden. Well, they won’t be able to handle you, will they? Because they’re relaxed having a flat white. And you’re coming in like a freight train.
Same thing with the ‘coach speak’ you see everywhere now. That kind of enlightened advice giving ain’t a normal way of talking to people, so it often fails in social media videos, or email marketing or whatever.
Of course, sometimes you want to change the tone, or ramp things up. If you’re naturally getting excited about something you have or whatever, you can let that come through. But if you have a tone that they can’t handle, or can’t hear because it’s incompatible with whatever they’re doing right now (sitting on the train, on the couch, or whatever), a lot of times you’re just going to lose people. Because you’re forcing yourself onto them.
And the other thing is your tone will attract or repel. For example, I’m not the best person to work with if you’re brand new in business, and don’t have a service. And the brand new people tend to froth on the motivation and cheerleading style a lot more. So, I don’t do that in my writing. Plus it’s not really who I am as a person.
The final thing I’d say is tone is a particularly big thing right now, because there’s a lot of negative tone in the culture over the last few years. And hype or anxiety. So if you meet people with more hype or a lot of hard ‘advice’, they tend to block it out. But if you meet them with a more relaxed tone, they’re more receptive.
Given that you know what you’re talking about.
Now, here’s a way you can practice a few of these things. This will seem a bit random, but it’s all about practice. If you look around you, you’ll have a desk, or a table, or something. Don’t look too closely! Now, try to describe what is around you in detail, without studying it. Write that out if you can.
Then allow yourself a few minutes to look around closely at whatever is there. Pens, rulers, a window, whatever. And again, write a few words describing your setting.
If you compare the two, you’ll see how much you’re naturally picking up on details. If there’s a huge gap with this exercise, it means you’re ‘off’ a little. And you want to pay more attention. Of course when you actually write something we don’t need all the details. Just enough to create an image in the mind. But most people generalise so much that they need some more details or specifics, to make it believable.
The other thing you can do with the tone, is, after you write out your next email, or record your next podcast, listen back to it. And notice the tone. Does it feel like you’re being invited in? Like someone’s welcomed you into their home, to sit down for a tea or coffee? Or, does it feel like you’re being pushed away?
That’s the tone. And if you get the tone right, alongside the specifics, it’s much more believable.
This is one of the ways I check myself. If it feels like it’s been ‘written’ or if it feels like ‘copywriting’, then I’m ‘off’. Because that pushes people away. And my goal is to invite people in. So then I’ve got to look at it a little more.
You know what got me thinking about all this? Well, what kicked it off was I was having a coffee and nobody else was around, so I thought I’d invite you in!
Finding Your 'Six Pack abs' Story
When I was about fifteen, I followed my dad’s lead and started going to a gym not too far from where we lived.
While I signed up - I was looking at all these Men’s Health magazines they had lying around.
Piles of them. I guess so people could read them, and get excited to train or whatever.
I noticed on almost every issue, there was an article or a picture about ‘Getting Abs’ on the cover.
Anyway, a couple of weeks back, and over twenty years later, I was at the supermarket and saw another Men’s Health mag in the rack
Well, guess what...? The same cover story about ‘Abs’ - Get this six pack abs routine.
Turns out, this is not just a common cover story. It’s basically the only cover story they run. There are a few variations. Build lean muscle. Get this body. Melt stubborn fat. Et cetera.
But the six pack abs is by far the most popular: Hi-def abs, Great Abs made Easy, Hard Abs on a plate,
Get smart get abs, Belly - drop two waist sizes, Flat belly foods…
And don’t forget: “Rock Hard Abs” - with Jason Statham.
Anyway, you would think that the audience would get fatigued, and burn out. But they don’t. In fact, they lap it up, one issue after another.
What’s your six pack abs story?
When you’re a service provider, it can be easy to get lost in the weeds with messaging.
What story do you tell?
Do you talk about your skills? Your point of difference? Or your backstory…?
One of the main parts of the business story we want to have clear, is the aspirational future state of your clients.
What does the world of your clients look like, after working with you? Once you get clear on this story, you want to repeat it over and over.
Let’s look at Red Bull again
(I pick on this company, because although they’re a product company, they’re really a marketing company… making it applicable to any kind of business).
When you search Red Bull. The top hit will be for the Red Bull website, you’ll see Red Bull Gives You Wings.
When you go to the website, they show a bunch of images flashing across the top of fold.
Out of five out of seven images are someone doing a jump, flying, jumping, or leaping in the air (all extreme sports). The other photos are images of victory.
Again, the same story of energy, flying (wings), achievement and possibility. When you go to their instagram page?
Well, four of the last six posts all show someone or something flying, jumping, or launching into the air, or above the water. The same story once again.
In fact, everywhere you turn, you see the same story playing out, energy, wings, action and achievement.
Let’s look at some of the top titles of their ‘TV’ shows on the website:
● Red Bull King of the Air 2023
● The Last Ascent (climbing film)
● Wings for Life World Run
● Best of the kitesurfing action
● F1 Hovercraft showdown
And on…
Can you keep telling the same kind of story without people getting sick and tired of you?
Sure.
While it can feel repetitive for us, for your audience, you occupy just one small channel. They seek you out for that specific story…
When we owned a gym, we started off with a tagline of sorts, “Strength, Conditioning, Wellness.”
We ran this story alongside basic strength programming that we did in our classes. Quickly we built a pretty solid member base.
Then I (for some reason), decided to change the story. I started to teach movement classes, we put in meditation and yoga classes. And basically moved away from the clear strength emphasis.
Well, as soon as we did that, our member base dropped and they moved to other strength gyms.
It took me a few months to figure it out and course correct.
Every major institution, brand, clothing label speaks to one clear story, that doesn’t change over time.
Nobody complains to Red Bull that there’s too much excitement. Nobody writes into Sézane to say there’s too much colour in the clothing. And nobody complains to Men’s Health that there’s too much of an emphasis on abs.
And so it is…
Once you know the core story for your biz-ness, you can put it on repeat, and it’s going to help your core clients find you and you can become the go-to business in your market.
Seven questions to help create more 'vision' with your business
A while back, I interviewed a surfer named Takkesh on a podcast.
He had created this company called Surf Flow, which is a little bit of movement therapy, and some manual therapy, mostly for surfers.
Anyway, after he started the biz, they got a little bit stuck.
So he sat down with his partner, and they did a vision exercise.
In Tak’s case, he literally ‘drew’ this vision with pens.
He had a sheet of A3 paper, and drew an picture of their bus (that they renovated and lived in), up on a hill, with waves in the background. Basically they had a vision of travelling around Australia, delivering the Surf Flow work. And starting a family on the road more or less.
Anyway, about five years passed.
Takkesh posted a photo, I think it was on instagram, of the bus, up on a hill, with waves breaking behind in the background. In the second slide, he had his old piece of paper. It was identical. He had become internationally known for the surf flow work, and was helping professional surfers and athletes all around Australia as they travelled, as well as overseas on the world tour.
Basically, it was an exact real life representation of what he’d drawn on the paper.
No small feat.
I don’t think everyone does a ‘vision’ that way.
Not everyone does a vision board. Or ‘sees’ it in their mind’s eye like that.
Some people put some notes into their phone.
I know other people who write out a description on a pad of paper.
Others just do think about it or talk about it.
When I was younger I used to do a lot of triathlon. And I trained with this guy Pete Jacobs, he was a real pro, but also kind of an underdog. Anyway, soon he started to talk about his vision of winning the world title.
He would say how he wanted to win, and that he knew he was capable of it, et cetera.
“How dare he??”
People got all up in arms at Pete. They hated his bravado and confidence. Because he hadn’t really won anything big yet…
Anyway, he used to talk about this vision all the time. Never drew it out, but I think voicing it made it clearer.
Sure enough, couple years later he won the title easily. And the funny thing was that people didn’t like him so much that the odds on him winning were really low with the betting houses. So we put some money on Pete and made a killing.
Point of all this?
Having a business vision can help you stay the course
And keep taking action with your work… However you do it.
As the late Jim Camp used to say, Vision Drives Decision. There is no action without vision. It’s important to take time to step back, and reconnect with where you are going.
So, on that high note, here are a list of questions that can help spark the ideas or thinking, that can lead towards vision.
1 - What kind of work are you doing?
What does your delivery look like? How many hours per day are you working? What type of work are you doing? For us, we do one-to-one coaching, and then the other work is around delivery.
2 - Who is there with you?
Who do you see on your team? Both inside your world, and outside?
3 - What kind of clients are you working with?
This could be the most important question you ask yourself. Who are you working with? How are you helping them? Think about not just their type of business, but also their personal values, how they show up, et cetera.
4 - What do people say about you?
Your business will grow because word will spread when people talk about you. The question is, what stories will they tell? What do you want people to say about you and your work?
5 - What do you love about your work?
What lights you up about your business vision? How will life be more enjoyable, or easier?
6 - What will the hardest part be?
Where do you think the obstacles will be? What part do you tend to avoid? Write this out now so you can know what to expect, and how to work around these obstacles.
7 - Who has done this before?
Who in your world has done what you’re trying to do? If there’s no-one, who can you go and find, or meet? It might feel like you’re in a unique situation, with a bunch of impossible tasks in front of you. But the truth is, all of this stuff in business has been done before. Maybe not in exactly the same way. But somewhere, there’s someone out there that has experience that can help you.
These seven questions ain’t going to ‘give’ you your vision.
Frankly. Nobody can do that. And nobody can tell you exactly how to convert your vision into a business.
However, when we’re trying to create more vision, the first thing we do is nurture. And as we’ve learned from the late Jim Camp, the best way to nurture, is through short interrogative questions. Questions like these help to open up vision, so that you can ‘pull’ it out of you.
And, when we have a vision that we perceive as meaningful, it drives emotion.
And the emotion drives action.
'Ten Point' live events checklist
Few weeks back, we ran our second live, in-person event for the year.
Frankly. It was a big success. A bunch of eager creators made it. Engagement was frothy. The kingfish for lunch was on the money, and everyone walked away with a few more friends, and a full belly and bubbling mind.
These in person events are a key for us. Partly because they are fun. And partly because there’s a much deeper level of learning and engagement than anything you can get on a computer screen.
Anyway, I tried to make an effort as we went along, to document the process.
I did a couple of podcasts and emails…
Kept notes in my diary…
But since we finished we’ve had a lot of questions about events. And, I know a lot of people want to run an event, but ain’t sure how, or maybe are afraid it will be boring or nobody will show up.
Fear not my friend. Here I’ve compiled a kind of a ‘checklist’.
A list of steps or tasks that made sure everything ran smoothly, and that help make sure the whole thing is unique, and not another one of those ‘business mastermind, stand on the stage and feel important’ things. How boring.
First, a short note on the idea of having a ‘theme.’
There’s a line from the late Herman Melville, who wrote Moby Dick:
“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.”
A theme is critical.
In fact, there could be a whole article on picking a good theme.
It’s how you get that ‘X-Factor’. And this is something that people struggle with, because it’s creative thinking. You can’t really copy another event, because the theme has to align with your overall business story or theme.
The first time I saw this played out (in a customer service setting, no less), was at Disneyland as a little kid.
I don’t know if it’s changed since then. But Walt Disney was known for his hard work (borderline obsessive), and attention to detail. In particular, with this whole idea of ‘theme.’
And basically is realising that it’s the vision and emotion that drive a memorable experience, much more than it is the facts and information.
So while the content of the event is key, the context, or experience the person has when they’re learning is just as important.
At Disneyland, you got lost into these unique worlds, and everything down to the music, costumes, backstory, and smallest character or ride details was planned out. In fact, each ride had its own theme too.
And so it is with your live event.
As you go through the checklist, keep in mind that tying it together with a theme that matches your business will make the big difference you might be looking for…
The Checklist
The first five points are a little more macro. This is the stuff that I like to think about a couple of months out.
The second half are more specific, and will vary with each event.
I’ve tried to focus on things that most people forget, but that are super important to have the whole thing run smoothly.
1 - Who is it for?
It’s impossible to run a live event that everyone that everyone in your audience will froth over.
Much better to choose a sub-set of your audience.
This could be people in a particular area. People with a particular interest or passion.
For example, in our last event, it was for Creator Club members, who wanted to travel to Newcastle, and learn a business leadership framework to grow their business. People came from Canada, Germany, and all parts of Australia. But not everyone. Some people couldn’t make it. It sounds simple, but by designing the event only for those who could show up, we didn’t have to organise live streaming or any online delivery.
This question seems basic. But it’s always worth covering, because now you can tailor every detail of the event to bring a better experience for your specific crew.
Here you can also think about how many people you can fit, or what the capacity of the event might be.
2 - What is it for?
An event can be tough to run. People travel. You burn a bunch of energy. It’s hard work on the day.
So, what are you doing it for?
To feel important?
Because you feel like you’re supposed to do one?
These may not be great drivers for success.
What is the change you want to make with your event?
To do this part well, try to get to one core thing. That sounds crazy, I know. Because hey, everyone is in the room, you could teach a million different things to people… And it would probably feel great too.
But that ain’t going to help anyone.
When there’s too much content, or vague content, whatever went in one ear will just fly out the other as soon as they leave.
In the last event we ran, the one topic was the ‘New Game Framework’. This is a business framework with six questions. In other events, we’ve covered ‘content creation.’ In another one, it was ‘character building’ for personal brand (i.e. a subset of personal brand).
Frankly. This wasn’t always the case for me. I used to try and ram too much into events and retreats. But the problem was, I would get exhausted, and people didn’t implement.
Since I’ve stripped it back to one core ‘function’, people now know why they’re in the room, it’s easier to teach, and it’s much easier for them to implement.
3 - How do you want them to feel?
The type of experience people have will be what sticks with them.
Think of this.
Going back to Disneyland - I don’t know if you’ve been… and if not, think of another theme park. Which rides do you remember the most easily? The rollercoaster? The big drops? The waterslides? Usually we remember the events that have one strong, core emotion attached to them. This penetrates our mind more powerfully, and it’s almost like our memory has something to hold on to.
Clothing brands are great at tying a particular emotion to their product, and we can do the same with events.
Do you want them to feel excited? Grounded? Thrilled? Connected?
What is the core emotion (typically in line with your overall brand).
For us, it was ‘energised.’ - which is fairly typical of our events.
Then once we had that emotion, we picked the colours (gold, white), venue, activities (improv storytelling, speaking et cetera)… everything else falls into place.
4 - What’s the one big idea?
This taps back into the theme, or the ‘what’s it for’. Reiterate the core big idea for your event. Meaning, when people walk away, if they have this one thing, the event will be a success.
For us, the New Game framework was about uniqueness. It’s a way to own a particular ‘story’ for your business, and stand out in the crowd of same same businesses that saturate every market.
Uniqueness ain’t the emotion. The emotion is ‘energised.’
Uniqueness is the big idea.
What is your big idea?
5 - How will they learn this and the ‘all important’ runsheet
There’s a type of learning called ‘LOPI’ - learning by observation and pitching in. It’s a style of learning used in Central America a lot with kids. And, to be honest, it’s how you and I tend to learn best, especially when we were growing up. Even though it’s the opposite to how a lot of school was set up.
So for our event, we picked this as a learning style.
This means from the beginning, the event was interactive. People were speaking with each other. Sharing ideas. Coaching each other. Speaking, et cetera. We had an interactive exercise within every hour.
Then we had a framework booklet.
And I did something different this time. I kind of filled the booklet with interesting quotes and ideas from related authors, heroes, or other creators. But we didn’t go through all of that on the day. I knew that for those who were interested, when they went home, they would have something to read over, making the booklet more interesting over time.
Once you have this clear, you can set up your run sheet.
This is probably the most important thing you’ll do before you kick off, because it outlines everything in one place.
When the event starts, how the day unfolds, when lunch breaks are et cetera. The run sheet gives participants clarity, and it gives you something to stick to as the day unfolds, taking a huge amount of stress off of your shoulders.
This is one of the biggest parts of setting up for a successful event.
6 - Signup form
This wasn’t relevant for our event, because we already knew everyone. But for a lot of events, it’s important, and something a lot of people miss. For example, when I first started out doing live events with a new audience in gyms, I used to just hand a clip board around where they could sign up to my email list. Now you can do it digitally. But if I hadn’t done that with the clipboard and paper, I would have never had their contact details.
To reiterate. The email addresses from the event participants typically go into your email list.
Now if you use an event hosting company, or sell tickets or whatever, you’ll get the email addresses automatically.
But it’s still a good idea to check, because a lot of people miss this step, and the emails never end up getting onto their list.
7 - Email reminder sequence
A lot of people sign up to live events on a whim. Then what happens is, something pops up, they change their mind. Whatever. And then they don’t want to go, or can’t make it. This is a massive thing with online events. Sometimes only 30% or so will turn up.
Now in our last live event, everyone made it. But that’s rare. And probably because we went so hard on this step.
Basically, you want to set up emails to remind them that the event is coming, and continue to ‘sell’ the event.
I did this by writing the reminder emails live, then telling stories as we went.
For example, when we were a week out, I sent an email, with a short story on the behind the scenes of the prep work et cetera. Then in the last 48 hours, the reminders (24 hour, 12 hour… and sometimes if it’s an online event you can even do 1 hour) are done automatically.
8 - Event location (or zoom location details), food, parking et cetera.
This sounds so basic it hurts, but what I recommend is about three days out, sending an email titled ‘All the event info you need to know’, or similar. Something very obvious.
Then in that email, spell out exactly where everything is.
The address. Where the entry is. The carpark details. How far the walk is from the carpark. Exact details. Any include tips on traffic times, the best spot for coffee on the way in, et cetera.
Then have a clear map.
Basically, you want to give everyone an easily searchable email that has everything in one place, so they don’t end up lost without a clean the last 24 hours.
Online events are the same. Make sure to have any zoom or online meeting details very clear (even highlighted).
People are moving fast. They’re stressed. And you need to meet them where they’re at. This one email is key.
For big events, it’s a good idea to include other details of the day here too (food to bring, amenities, weather et cetera), and even another outline of the day so they know where the breaks are.
9 - Protocols on recordings
Is your event recorded? If so, when will they get it? What format will they get?
Now, we make a point of recording most of our events. But it doesn’t mean that it’s right, or that you have to.
You could make a blanket rule not to record as well.
But you need to be clear either way.
Why?
Well, some people may (or may not) want to take notes, depending on the recording situation.
Also, if the recording is video or photos, they’ll want to know if they are going to end up on camera, or in social media.
Usually people are OK with this, but not always. You want to check beforehand by outlining all the recording protocols.
10 - What is the next step for them after the event?
This kind of comes from Dan Kennedy, who used to say “Always know what you want to happen next.”
When people go away from your event, what do you want them to do?
Is there a follow up action you can give them?
Do they have a workbook?
Or a way to keep in touch so they can scheme up their own ideas or events together?
In a business mastermind I was in once, one of the coolest things was how closely a few of us kept in touch.
We kind of did this off our own back, but it’s certainly something that you could facilitate by having a directory of contact details.
You might also end the event with some kind of action or commitment.
If so, is there an accountability system you can bring in to help make sure there’s follow through?
Tell us what actions could lead to even greater success when we finish up, and that makes it easier for us to do them.
Summary
Live events are a great way to bring existing clients together, or meet new people in your business world around a topic. In fact, for most of the businesses we work with, we strongly recommend attending, co-hosting, or hosting live events.
And while every event is different, having a checklist or process to go through can make the whole thing easier, and, therefore more repeatable or tempting to run.
And that’s the whole goal.
Once you’ve gone through this checklist, you’ll be fairly close. You’re still going to have to figure out smaller logistics - decorating the room to match the theme. Making sure there’s the gluten free food for the gluten free people. Making sure you eat enough food to make it through the day et cetera.
But a lot of that stuff falls into place when you have the major pieces locked in.
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE STEP BY STEP GUIDE
Because we know events can be a lot of fun but overwhelming to organise, we created you a free guide that breaks down the process step by step.
You'll walk away with an outline for the event, a marketing timeline, ready to sell out your first event.
Seeing a 'Vision' for Your Business
“Full-fledged human thought always tries to project new realities. And all knowledge about the past… plays only a subservient role to better project a new reality” - Uktomsky
There’s a short video interview I saw of J.R.R Tolkien, and the guy was asking him about how he came up with The Hobbit.
First, the interviewer asked him if he laid out the whole story, and had it all mapped out?
“The world existed is possé and in a large scale plan before the hobbit was written. The Hobbit was in fact originally an attempt to write something outside of it, and it grew into it. “
“So you invented the world before you wrote the habit?”
Tolkien: “Yes indeed.”
From what I understand, Tolkien had a very energetic mind. Growing up he was already fascinated with different languages. And basically would invent them and speak them at dinner.
And when he was creating his ‘world’, he drew on all kinds of influences and mythology.
Anyway, he did all of this before the story was crafted
When he was building his Ultima series of online games, Richard Garriot did something similar:
“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 Garriot
The juice for small biz-ness?
A lot of people think about their biz-ness by coming up with an offer that they present to someone, for some cash.
This lets you make money and hopefully build a good life.
And it gives them a solution.
Then, you might want to build more ‘brand’ around your business. So you get some images, or learn to write with more personality. Whatever it might be.
But two problems can come up.
One is the business can always have a ‘self serving’ undertone to it. Which is graspy, and not that attractive.
The other thing, is that the business owner can often feel stuck around what to do next. They spend their time inside of their business, consuming social media, and struggle with new (and good) ideas.
What’s the next offer?
What’s the next move?
And there can be this loop, where they get stuck, because the leading part of the whole thing to begin with was transactional.
And at some point, it is less attractive to clients.
When we create a business vision, we look at it from a different perspective.
We stop thinking about the money in our pocket for a second.
We stop thinking about the offer that we have.
And we think about the world that we want to create. And what that looks like, visually in our mind.
A little while back, I was talking to a woman who runs an NDIS support business. It’s one of the leading businesses in that market in the state, and is growing rapidly.
One thing I noticed, was how many ideas for new offers she had.
There were offers for the client level.
Workshop offer ideas for other businesses.
Training offers.
She had dozens up her sleeve.
I asked her about what kind of future she saw in her mind because of all this? And she proceeded to explain an entirely different world. A world where her clients - people with various disabilities - were participating in life at a deeper level, and doing all kinds of cool things.
Her vision of her world was driving her business and activities.
As the late Jim Camp teaches us, vision drives decision.
Now, this ain’t easy for everyone. In particular, new business owners who are looking for those early clients, because there’s that early focus on money for a lot of people.
But it’s a skill that we can practice, and leads to much more magnetic (and often profitable) services.
‘Thinking visually’, and creating a vision
In the past, we’ve run all kinds of vision activities. Vision boards. Workshops to ‘create’ a vision.
And there are a lot of variations of that which can work.
But the one thing that ties it all together, is that a vision is ‘visual’. It’s something that we can see.
And while this might be different for you, I’ve personally found that there are a few things that can really help to create more ‘vision.’
Step one - Restore energy
When a new business owner comes in, very rarely do they have a strong vision. Usually, they’re burned out, scattered, or bouncing around different offers or ideas. Even if their business is doing well on paper. So the first thing we try to do is, we take the pressure off. We lay everything out, and try to calm things down enough to see what’s going on.
From there, we try to help the business owner see that a) there’s usually time, and b) that the future is bright.
That’s often enough to get a little relief, and take the pressure off themselves for a second. Restoring their own energy.
That sounds corny, I know, but if you can’t restore energy, how can you come up with a vision, given that it demands a lot of energy.
Step two - Have interesting conversation to stimulate the mind
A lot of people don’t know this, but Tolkien was actually close friends with C.S. Lewis. They got together and formed a group called the ‘Inklings’. And Tolkien and Lewis didn’t get along all the time. But still, their conversations would spark more creative thinking, and a deeper vision.
In the end, from what I’ve heard, Lewis was a big reason for Tolkien to actually finish the work.
Conversation with your clients is going to be one of the best options. But also with friends, peers, mentors. Whatever.
Most people stay in their little box way too much, and get stuck behind a screen.
And generally, that isolation combined with scrolling social media ain’t going to lead to a strong vision for the future of a business.
Step three - Look at great old work. Then re-imagine it into something new
I read an article about a guy who started a company that hosts aged care facilities that you can rent out.
So it’s like Airbnb, but for older people who need the aged care side of things.
Anyway, they blew up fast.
The point of this? It’s built on the Airbnb DNA. It’s the same model, resynthesided into something new.
And air b’n’b? A blend of the home rental model, with hotels.
Tolkien’s work?
A lot of his different races and villages, filled with heroes and epic stories, came out of Eddas, a collection of Nordic tales from 1220, by Snorri Sturluson.
It’s new. But it’s build on old work that is great.
We see this with businesses all the time. One guy recently started a business around mindfulness and ‘mental performance’ training for kids. While his new offer saw almost instant traction, it was built on previous work he did with adults, and blended with his personal story as a dad.
How can your vision for your business be ‘augmented’ by looking at what exists, and building on it for something greater and more relevant to today’s world?
Step four - Practice ‘seeing’
A lot of people today don’t see much beyond the feed on their phones. I know that ain’t totally fair. But you’d be surprised, when you meet a lot of different business owners. But that’s a problem, because it takes your eyes off of your own vision.
If you want to learn to do a handstand, one of the big things is to ‘see and believe’ that you can do the handstand.
If you just keep kicking up, you can spend years trying and get nowhere.
When you ‘see’ it, you start to connect with the movement lots faster.
And so it is with your business.
Practice ‘seeing’ the world you want to create.
For us, it’s small businesses that are creative leaders in their niche. They don’t follow the status quo, but rather create a new ‘game’ for their customers to help their customers win in the fast changing world.
They are great communicators, and they take risks.
So I practice ‘seeing’ how that all connects, and what that actually looks like visually.
You can practice this with little tasks, and then it becomes a skill you can carry forward into your overall business.
Step five - Think of exactly what you want to create. Then create that
If you want to create a social media post, create that.
If you want to create a book. Create that.
This sounds almost too simple.
But it’s easy to over-complicate your offers and marketing (and business!).
When you think of exactly what it is that you want to build, whether it’s a project, or your overall business, then you are way ahead.
A lot of people don’t really know what they want to create.
And therein lies the root of the problem.
A successful business needs something to drive it forward.
Necessity can be a driver.
Competition can be a driver.
But one of the most powerful drivers, is creating a strong vision that you can see and believe in.
This doesn’t mean that a vision at any point in time is fixed. Or can’t evolve. But it does mean that there’s an image of a new world that you are creating. One that you believe in, that also helps the people you serve.
Some people tick this box with a ‘vision statement’ up on a website. They tell people what they’re about, or what the mission is.
But it’s another thing to practice seeing and believing in our own vision. And creating the world that we want to build in our mind, before we go out there and start doing it, and ‘show’ people what that vision looks like, and how it helps the people we serve.
Some people are naturally good at this.
Others are more stuck in language, and rules, and may benefit from partnering with a more visual person.
Either way, all of it is a skill we can work on, and apply it into your business daily.
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Marketing 'continuum' for service businesses
Years ago, as a young buck personal trainer, I did a bunch of strength training courses.
One was called FMA, run by a guy Mark Buckley. I think the FMA stood for Functional Movement Analysis or something. But the cool part about it, was they had this strength ‘continuum’. That’s not what they called it, I think it was strength ‘standards’. But it gave you a spectrum of where you were at with different lifts versus different age groups.
They weren’t the first to do this. But they did do it elegantly.
For example, there was ‘strong’, ‘strong +, and ‘strong ++’.
For the squat, deadlift and bench press. And it was a multiple of your bodyweight.
It wasn’t just for people who wanted to progress down the line either. It gave you an understanding of where to work with different clients. So if you worked with rugby players, for example. There wasn’t much point in going past ‘strong’. Because you could spend the rest of the time on skill development or actual practice of the sport.
So it was a good reality check.
Anyway, that was a previous life, I don’t do personal training any more. Now we work with businesses and their revenue. And a big part of that is marketing.
Marketing is a skill.
And in the trust economy, that skill is all about avoiding the saturated claims based stuff out there, and learning to tell our business story powerfully and help our clients win. And for our business, this is also how we attract clients.
The thing about skills is, they’re learned. I remember when a friend of mine opened a new café. I went in to help them calibrate new coffee machines. Together we all pulled around 1,000 shots of espresso. Not only did the machines need to be dialled, our (their) skills needed to be fine-tuned for a horde of customers wanting their caffeine the next week.
Anyway, all this came to a head with a book I’ve spoken a lot about, which is Robert McKee’s ‘Storynomics’. In the book, he has a marketing continuum, that is really calibrated for big business. But when I saw it, I thought, you know, that looks a lot like what we teach service businesses, but just organised so cleanly.
So, here we are. McKee’s work inspiring this article - with five different ‘levels’ on the marketing continuum for service businesses.
Stage one - Bystander
When I was younger, I worked in a sail boat mast factory for a while.
I mostly did laminations, and cleaned the floors.
There was one older guy who used to walk around the factory, and then disappear into the office. He was an engineer, and had some kind of role within management. But one day in the lunch room, a fight broke out (I know, crazy), between one of the factory guys, and this management bloke.
Later, I heard the factory guy Dave, refer to the other guy as ‘Half Job’. That was his nickname apparently. He was always just watching. And didn’t seem to have a real job. He was just a bystander.
And so it is with ‘stage one’ marketing.
There’s very little marketing happening. ‘Half Job’ marketing. The Bystander might do a bit of content once in a while, when they feel good, or when they’re excited by something. But it’s typically about what’s going on in their world, and has little value to the audience.
There are also long periods of time where there is no marketing, and only consuming.
We all start here at some stage. But there is little to no impact from this ad-hoc content.
Stage two - Novice
The novice understands the importance of content. And they even have some content going out that is intended to help the audience. But, it’s off and on. And the lack of consistency means there isn’t much trust, so the audience ignores the content. (why pay attention if it’s just going to stop again?). There’s no rhythm, and thus, no incentive to return.
One example of this is when a business runs an event or puts out a new product. They might do a bit of campaign content around the event and even the benefit of the event for the audience.
But then stop once it’s over.
Stage three - Expert
The expert has consistent content that educates, inspires or entertains over time. An example of this could be a resource library, or a social media page, a podcast, articles, or something that helps the audience level up.
There’s a strong reason to come back, because the information is helpful, it helps the audience to win, and the service provider is seen as a trustworthy guide.
This is common in the health market. People might have symptoms, and the service can educate on possible underlying problems, mechanisms, and what you can do about it.
Stage four - Leader
The business moves from consistent content creation that’s based on information or education, to sustained storytelling.
The stories can be around characters in the world (if engaging enough), or, more commonly, client success stories.
Red Bull is one of the strongest examples of this. While they have one product, nobody really cares too much about what’s in it. In fact, customers know it has little nutritional value. But Red Bull takes a different angle. They became a marketing company, and spend millions on creating platforms, events, and news channels to tell the ‘high energy’ stories of sponsored athletes and customers.
This is also common in the diet industry, with before and after photos. A lot of people don’t like these. And I get that.
But it’s important to know how they work. In two photos, and a short bit of copy, you get a story. You see the character, you learn about the struggle that they had on the way to their goal, and, you see the transformation. For someone who is looking for that transformation, this can be a strong message.
You don’t have to do extreme sports, or body transformation stories.
They may not be relevant. But you can look at your service, and start to tell stories around the transformations of people who you help.
What are they able to do in their lives, as a result of your service?
Stage Five - Visionary
The visionary is not just using storytelling in content. Their whole business is story driven. Their events, the way they build teams, how they design products, how they sell, and how they lead is all driven through story.
One example of this, is if you look at how Steve Jobs ran Apple early on.
Jobs’ whole approach was based on knowing they were going to ‘put a dent in the universe’. That Apple itself was creating a story and creating a new game for people to play.
More, his Apple stores (tiles from Italy), product launches (1984 film), and even campaign collaborations were all driven through story, and focused on customer experience.
This was probably the biggest contrast to other competitors. Other companies had the tech. But Jobs understood story. He had vision, conflict, and wild results. ‘Story’ was the inner life of the company.
Summary
Getting rolling with content marketing can be hard enough.
Especially when you have clients to serve, or a business to run.
But when you start to see the long term value of marketing, it eventually becomes a nut you want to crack. And at that point, it helps to get some bearings on where you’re at and where you’re going.
The goal of course, is to move to stage four and five.
When markets were less saturated, and the internet less crowded, the earlier stages were still effective.
But now in an oversaturated market, and with trust at rock-bottom, when people go online to consume content, their defense mechanisms are already up.
Story driven content doesn’t raise the armour as much. It allows the creator to connect with the audience. And then the insight of the story can be delivered either implicitly, or explicitly.
Once you are able to produce content consistently, and understand what is most valuable to your audience, look for angles to use stories, for even more impact.
Three ways to build more trust and engagement
On the intake form that we have with businesses, there’s a box that asks: What do you need to work on? One box that is almost always ‘ticked’ is business messaging. Most people feel that they could be clearer about what they do, and how they talk about it.
It’s a fair call.
Usually though, it isn’t a ‘messaging’ problem.
Or, put another way, we find that messaging problems are usually business story problems.
If you’re clear on the business story, the messaging takes care of itself.
The words come easily.
Anyway, in a more saturated market, when the business story or messaging is off, the business can be flat, and marketing can fall on deaf ears. When the business story and messaging is clear, you can build trust and engagement over time.
People see you as a guide that can take them to a particular destination.
So to tweak our messaging to build engagement and trust, we’re really shifting the business story. Or the overarching way that we communicate what we do, and how it fits into the changing world of our clients.
There are three little tips that can be helpful here.
1 - Switch out claims for success stories
What is a claim, or claims based marketing?
When you see a gym that advertises they will help you lose five kilos, in three months, that’s a claim.
When we have a marketer tell you they will double XX leads or whatever, that is a claim.
When a yoga studio says they have the best community, or the best teachers, that’s also a claim.
In an unsaturated market, this is fine. But in a land of a million people doing a similar thing, it falls on deaf ears. Not just because a lot of claims are empty promises. But because when everyone is making claims, how are you going to stand out?
Now, while it’s true that we might always have some element of claims if we drill down enough, one way you can build more trust, is to adjust the message to focus on what you can control with the client.
For example.
Let’s say you start a strength gym. You could have three levels of ‘claim’, or mission for the buyer:
“Build incredible strength and confidence in all areas of life”
“Build full body strength”
“Get started in the gym with a custom program”
Which is the right line?
Most people will shoot for the first one. It’s more aspirational. And they’ll say, don’t tell people what you do, tell them what you do for them. And it sounds more compelling. And while I agree, it’s also vague. And, we all know that not everyone who starts at a gym, becomes a confident superhero.
Personally, while I’m the first to say that all purchases are made emotionally, the more we shift into the trust economy, the more I find the third option more attractive.
However, if there ain’t any bold claims, how do we pull at the heart strings and create compelling vision?
We showcase client results, and provide success stories that are way over and above the claim (‘super success stories’).
So we might get people started with training.
But then we show people who have had strong transformations, and tell the stories of the quests they have gone on, which show the confidence.
Each business has a particular balance here. But the focus is to ‘show not tell’.
2 - Be careful telling the client they have a problem
Seems like every few weeks there’s a new problem that we face in the world, that the news media blasts out to us around the clock.
When that problem is new, or when we sense that there’s a change happening, we pay more attention.
But when that situation stops changing? We start to ignore it.
This is because change drives attention more than a static problem. And so it is with business.
When we come out guns blazing as a service provider, and tell the customer that they have a problem with distraction, a problem with motivation, or a problem with their tax, or health, or whatever, they can go into defence mode.
This is the root of a lot of copywriting frameworks.
And while they’re designed to get under the skin, they can raise the defence mechanism of the reader, or shift the whole thing into the ‘I’ll worry about it later” basket.
Instead, we can focus on the change going on around them, and tell the story of how this is creating winners and losers.
(Those who embrace the change and use the new methods, or those who don’t).
This allows them to recognise that they may have a problem.
Types of change we can focus on?
Internal:
Ageing
Health
Strength
Growing our business
Meeting someone
Moving houses
Et cetera
External:
Shifting trends
Changes in customer behaviour (B2B)
Changes in technology
Changes in environment
Social changes
Changes in what a ‘leader’, ‘parent’, ‘husband’ et cetera now looks like…
And more.
To start with, a ‘change’ captures attention. So when you point out a change, then you can raise the stakes by showing how this change is already impacting the culture.
Some are losing. Some are adapting to the change, and winning.
3 - Sell the game, not the offer
This comes from Richard Garriott, who was one of the big inventors of online gaming. And what he did was, he created the Ultima online games, and found that once people were playing the game, they wanted to spend more money in there. And there was all kinds of opportunities for market places, and ‘offers’. But they had to be playing the game first.
And so it is with business.
Say we stick to the gym example. Well, there’s a lot of different kinds of gyms.
There are movement gyms. Strength gyms, et cetera.
So your game might be ‘bodyweight strength’ at your gym.
Well, selling the game means you’re an evangelist for that game. You want as many people playing that game as possible as a primary goal. Then they purchase your offer because it’s a stepping stone that helps them to win the game.
Now, instead of positioning as a self-serving marketer trying to make a sale…
You’re someone who’s leading a change that you want to make, and inviting people to come along.
Summary
Trust is built slowly, and, can evaporate quickly. And relies on everything from our vision all the way down to our day to day behaviour.
But the start of all of it, is in our perspective. How can we communicate our business and offer in a way that elevates our clients and where they want to go, ahead of money in our bank?
It might feel like you won’t get paid as quickly. And, that may be true to an extent.
But the opposite is you make bolder and stronger claims, they’re ignored, and, you don’t get paid at all.
Find out more about growing your service business with the Creator Club business coaching
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How to create a writing practice as a service business
“I'm a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character.” - Alfred Hitchcock
Well, one question is, is, why write? In a world of video, is slow, lethargic, crotchety old writing even worthwhile for the busy service business owner? It’s the videos that go viral. And the videos that build the most trust?
Or is it?
One of the decisions I made a few years back was to focus more on writing. Not to be a ‘writer’ in an ivory tower, but to use it as my medium for communication with businesses. So my main formats are books, articles and emails. Or, writing on an instagram post.
Part of this was because I always liked it. Also I just see it as the most superior. Call it bias, or whatever. But I kind of look at book authors as the top of the communication food chain. Then everyone else kind of falls underneath them. That’s just my view… Sure there are podcasts and TV stars et cetera. But there’s a reason why people know Hemingway’s name even if they never pick up a pen.
Anyway, things have worked out so far.
There’s plenty of trust. The content gets the reach. And, the contrarian in me smiles at the overflow of video out there, knowing that there’s another way, should one choose.
So a ‘writing’ practice versus a speaking practice, or whatever, is a choice.
Another thing I like is training. And, writing and training don’t have a lot in common. In one, you sit on your ass. With the other, you’re lifting weights. But there is one common thread: most people start, but don’t continue, and, on top of that, most of us think that we’re better than we are. In the training world, all we have to do is look at a ten year old weightlifter from Russia or China, and we get humbled pretty fast.
In the writing world, it’s easy to trick ourselves into thinking we’re a writer because we have written something. But in either case, it’s worth having the hubris to realise this whole thing is a lifelong practice.
And, even though it’s a practice, as a business owner, you can start to make more money as you practice.
And this is the trick.
A couple months back, I got an email from one of the creators. And she had started to write articles and send some emails. Well, on her thirteenth email ever, she put in an offer. I think it went out to thirty people or so. And a few people bought the consulting offer. That’s nothing to sneeze at. And, for anyone wanting to write better, that’s the goal. To get paid as the business owner, while you’re getting better as a writer.
So there are a few points to setting up a writing practice that sticks.
1 - Create a Reason to Write
You may say this sounds vague. But it’s key. For me, I’ve found that the more I write, the better I do, the more I can help people et cetera. It also helps me improve my work. On top of this, I look at writing as a long term thing. So that’s part of the reason. Over the years, I’ll build the reputation as a ‘writer’. Which is of course all about the ego. And, I’m totally fine with that.
So the question is, what’s your reason?
Why bother?
How can you believe in a story where it makes sense to actually put the time in?
I used ‘create’ a reason on purpose. Because you get to make this up. My reason to write won’t be the same as yours.
Your writing can be a tool to become a better communicator.
To make more money.
To help you build an audience.
To create marketing assets for your business.
Or maybe you just want to write thriller novels or be a more compelling pen pal. Whatever.
Down the line, we tend to enjoy writing just because it’s fun. And you can create cool stuff. But it takes a bit of pounding away on the keys to get to that. So you want to know your reason beforehand to get some momentum.
2 - Have a ‘Place’ to Write
While back I was reading ‘The Power of Myth’ by Joseph Campbell, and in there he was talking about how going to the cinema was more like a ritual.
So basically, we would enter the cinema, and watch these stories, with the actors et cetera, who were kind of put up on a pedestal. But what happened when Netflix and the other streaming platforms came in, is that ‘ritual’ has kind of shifted. And this is one of the reasons why the trust in celebrities and influencers is down, because the ritual has stopped, by not having to go to that same ‘place.’
And, in all kinds of rituals, the ‘place’ has a lot of importance.
And so it is with writing. Not the ‘place’ as in I’m writing this from a kitchen table now in New Zealand versus my office. But having a ‘place’ that you show up, or where the writing sits, is key.
Personally, as soon as I defined a ‘place’ to write, I started writing. It was that simple. For me, it was a blog. Then each day, the posts would get automatically emailed out to the list. Now I’ve changed that process, and I write for the articles, or the emails. Or a book each year.
But we want to have a ‘place’.
Lately, I’ve seen a lot of people get into the Substack thing. I don’t know why, but it seems to be the rage. Personally, I recommend straight email for most people, or, if they’re already posting on some other platform, just write there. For example, if they’re doing instagram or twitter, then just start using that more, but for writing.
LinkedIn is another one that could be useful. You’ve got to put up with all of the ‘I’d like to humbly announce my new job where I’m so proud to be working…’ posts. But it could still be great.
3 - Create a Rhythm
I was reading a paper a while back by a Russian physiologist, and it was talking about how every ‘system’ in nature, has to have a rhythm. If there ain’t a rhythm to it, then there ain’t a system. And so it is with training, painting, writing… We know the systems are the way that we get to the vision, or mastery, but so many people are afraid to commit to a rhythm.
But if you're writing for marketing. If you don’t have a rhythm, you just end up with start-stop marketing. Everything has a rhythm, or a cycle. The moon. The sun. Music. The working day. Your breathing. Your writing.
So to get a rhythm, we commit to writing with a frequency. Ideally daily. I mean, I came through the whole school system, and university and everything, and there are a lot of flaws with that system. But one strength is that if you want to learn something, you go in each day and you practice it. Same with writing. If you want to get better at this stuff, there’s no reason not to do it every day. But you could write daily, and ship it weekly. Or you could write weekly. Whatever.
I’m at my best with writing when I write daily. Or at least outline something. Or chip away at something. The next book. Or the next article. I would guess that it would be the same for you.
Writing is an attractive skill for a lot of service businesses.
It’s the ‘gateway’ for articles, blogs, emails, books et cetera. And it’s good for introverts or people who can’t be bothered with all the video editing, et cetera.
And there are a lot of things we can learn ‘within’ writing. Setting up articles. Coming up with ideas. Using personality and structure. But it’s helpful to look at the macro too. And really orient the mind towards the writing, if we want to get better at it. Because while it’s fun, and rewarding, it takes work my friend.
It’s more blue collar than anything.
So get clear on why you’re writing, create a place, and a rhythm, sit down and start pounding the keys.
What is your website for?
I got to this one in the usual way. Unusually. It started with a message from a coach:
“This might be more than a yes or no question. I don’t have a website at the moment. Do I need one?”
Short answer?
Yep.
But then the contrarian in me stirred because I could point to cases very close to me where businesses, including coaches just like this, didn’t have a site, and still made good money.
So we have to look a bit deeper. Let’s start with what a website is actually for.
Most people fall into one of two camps with the website.
The direct response crew tend to see it as a funnel.
Give as little freedom as possible, with direct routes to the check-out. I’m actually more aligned with direct response than the second one…
Others think it’s about making a creative, pretty page…
A place to ‘find’ the business, with good SEO. They have amazing photos, and logos, and usually link back out to their instagram page halfway down the main page. Maybe they think they might get followers (and that somehow, that’s more important than them staying on the site)? They also tend to have blog posts that feel like they were written by a machine, hoping that it helps search somehow.
We go a different route.
In a lot of the other articles, and podcasts, we’ve been talking about the ‘trust’ economy, and how this has accelerated. Basically, while this ain’t new, trust levels are now at record lows, while polarisation is at record highs.
This makes things interesting for small business.
There’s an opportunity for those who are less self-serving, and are willing to play the game properly, to establish massive amounts of relative trust, and perform quite well. And this is what we’re seeing, kind of a ‘split’.
Anyway, maybe if we had to distill the ‘trust economy’ idea down to a question, it could be this:
“What happens next?”
If we think about the way we got to where we are, it’s because business owners, leaders, and media outlets were moving too fast. They were too self serving to ask that one question in their biz-ness over the last twenty years. And managed to hit a long enough string of false claims in a row, to break down trust.
That’s how trust always works.
When we take the risk to make a promise to others, then work to keep that promise, we build trust. When we make a promise, or a claim, then break that promise, we lose trust. Trust is sequential. This is why there’s no such thing as a ‘closed’ sale - the sale never really ends (and ‘everything is marketing’).
Back to the website thing
If you think about your marketing, which is really the contact point between your business and your audience, whether that’s through networking, social media, or a podcast, this is where people are introduced to your world.
OK, so the question is “What happens next?”
Well, the thing about people is, they are curious. They’ll go down comment and thread rabbit holes just to see what other people who they don’t know are saying about a topic that they don’t agree with. In a sense, if they are intrigued by your story (marketing), they will go deeper if they can.
This is why you should always have a website. Because you can.
And because they will go to it.
You have an opportunity to clarify your business story, connect the dots in your marketing, and invite your audience into the next layer of your world (email list, articles like this one, your offer, et cetera).
[More: When you have a good site, you’ll also feel a stronger sense of identity, which is as important as anything else.]
Here we’re going to look at five jobs your website has, so that whether you go to a ‘site builder’ or you do a WIX job, or a Squarespace, you have some understanding on the why’s of each part. Then your copy and images, et cetera will make much more sense.
Job 1 - Point to the Change Happening in Your Audience’s World
A good business is based on ‘change.’
Change drives attention, and it also creates natural urgency, because as social animals, when there’s a change, we foresee problems, and we don’t want to get left behind. Change is linked to status.
There are two types of change, one is personal, and one is cultural.
Some friends of mine run Bulletproof for BJJ. Strength training for BJJ athletes. Now besides a brief chat early on about messaging, I have had nothing to do with these guys professionally. But I do want to do a full case study on this at some stage. Anyway, here’s the top of fold for the site:
“Be Prepared for BJJ.”
The change? You’re trying to advance in BJJ (individual).
Another example of this I’ve pointed out before was the RA MA website.
The change? The move into the technology age (cultural).
What is changing in your audience’s world that they can’t ignore?
Examples could include:
Opening a gym (career/business)
Their clients looking for new solutions (B2B) (wealth)
They are getting older (ageing)
They are entering a race (status)
They have a test coming up for the Fire Department (vocation)
They have just become a parent (parenting)
They want to have a kid (pregnancy)
Something has led to them deciding to get healthy or out of pain
There could be hundreds. These are just a few top level ones. We can feel what change does to our attention, if we just open up a news website. You’ll exclusively see (and feel) change.
Change isn’t just ‘change’ for the sake of it.
Change naturally creates a choice for the reader.
“What do I want to do here?”
This presents a fork in the road, and, if you’ve pointed to the right change, it will be a fork that’s impossible to ignore.
One path, is the old game, and the other, is the new game you can help them to play.
Job 2 - Show why the old game ain’t working anymore
And how some are now moving forward in the new game.
One mistake a lot of people make with this stuff, is to simply make a statement.
“The New Game is this: ________” And just use those words.
That can work, but hopefully you picked up why it often ain’t enough on its own. Because if we aren’t careful, it can just become a self serving claim.
This is because the story driven, or new game approach isn’t a tactic.
It’s a strategy or framework. So if we just use the words, or point it out without support, we’re ignored. What we need to do now is, show why the old game isn’t working (ideally, with proof), and how the people are winning moving forward.
This is a case of the ole’
“what got you here, ain’t going to get you to where you want to go now…”
Let’s go back to the Bulletproof for BJJ site:
“The majority of grapplers are stiff, sore, and under-performing. Truth is, they’re not sure how long they’ll be able to keep it up.”
Strong. Though it has a slight claim feel to it. Having said that, it’s more of an unspoken truth than a claim. I’m no expert, but pretty much every person I know who does BJJ seems to be constantly, often seriously, injured. So they’re more just making a point.
The reader should feel friction here. For the readers that agree with your change, this friction comes from the fact that they don’t want to be left behind, and this is important for them to pay attention to the next part of the story.
Job 3 - Describe the new game
A while back I had to go down to Melbourne to get my US passport renewed.
When I was in the passport office, up on the wall were a bunch of TV’s screening a travel advertisement to the states. They showed a bunch of different landscapes and cities, knowing that if you were there getting your passport, at least you were the right audience to advertise to.
This describes the ‘vision’ of what life can look like after the purchase.
Not what life looks like buying the service.
But what it enables us to do.
Often on a website, a business will start off with a big claim at the top.
Then quickly move into what the problem is and the solution that they have.
The issue with this can be we aren’t yet bought into the story. We get defensive, and look over the ‘breakdown’ of the offer with a blank stare.
But when we start off by pointing out the change, and raising the stakes, we are suddenly interested. We are hooked into the story, and we are curious as to what it can look like. This creates vision of taking positive action, whether or not it is with this business.
In Creator Club, we’re all about service businesses that thrive in the trust economy. Through using a story driven framework. So here, we describe what that looks like, and what life looks like as a Creator. In fact, now we dedicate a whole page to ‘Meet the Creators’.
Job 4 - Point to content
When a business is story driven, it means they’re driven by the story of the business, literally. Meaning the change they want to make is more important than anything else, and, the revenue they get from selling the offer or product is a result of that.
Thus, tapping into two of the universal laws of human nature:
‘Whoever needs it the least, wins,’ and ‘always lead with generosity.’
By not focusing firstly on the sale, they occur to us as less needy. And by generously creating content, they are always providing helpful goodwill for those who want to play the new game.
This gives us some radical insights into the type of content that we would expect:
How to win the new game (tips and strategies)
Stories of players winning the game
Reiterating the importance of the change happening
Some businesses will have more here. Some less. Some more entertainment focused. Some more educational. Each business is different in terms of what this content looks like. For us, it’s articles, podcasts and books. On the Bulletproof for BJJ page, it’s podcasts and articles. On the Red Bull site it’s customer success stories.
Either way, this is where any ‘asset building’ long form content would sit.
All of this making the site is not purely a sales funnel to the offer, but a gateway to your unique world and biz-ness story.
Job 5 - Present paid offer with success stories, and tell ‘em what to do to buy
The direct response DNA. One of the purposes of business is to create customers.
So, you want to have a clear way for people to work with you, or buy from you.
Each business is different, but this could be:
A phone number to call
A contact form on the site
An email address
Something to download
This will lead to the ‘next step’ in the sales process, whatever that is.
And the success stories?
These are key content pieces that help your audience to see that although you didn’t make any big promises or claims, your offer delivers the results. These are important on a website, because no matter how compelling your social media or podcast are, the buying happens on the site, and the success stories help to sooth necessary concerns that arise before purchase.
Back in the olden days of business, you would just hang up a sign on a shop front to say you are open for business, and wait for word to spread.
Some people think of a website this way.
An announcement, or a place for people to ‘find’ you, which would mean ‘make it very pretty’ and creative.
Others see it as part of the funnel, giving the visitor very few options, other than to buy.
While we are of course looking at a site that’s optimised for sales, looking at it from a story driven perspective means slowing the buying cycle down, not speeding it up.
Giving the visitor more time in your world.
In effect, this is because we are selling the story before the offer. We are marketing the story, before the offer.
A good website can be a strong, central ‘hub’ for your business story, and clearly articulates the change that is relevant to your client, and how you help them navigate that change, through content, and through your service.
Bringing out the characters in your business
“Let’s step into character” - Jules, Pulp Fiction
Let’s start with a bit of drama. I can tell you a bit of behind the scenes, as someone who enjoys writing, that there’s disagreement with this ‘personality in writing’ stuff. Some don’t like it.
Others do.
And there are various reasons, I suppose. But at the end of the day, the question is…
Should we bring out ‘character’ in business?
I’m obviously biased towards character and personality in business, so we can’t trust my answer. So here’s another question:
Where does your relationship with a business or creator lie?
If the relationship you have with the business lies in the information, character is less important. Getting your drivers licence renewed, et cetera. Something we have to do. But if the relationship lies in something deeper, such as brand, how the product or information makes you feel, well, then we need to look at character.
If you’re in a service, hospitality or even product business, you hopefully point to the latter.
And, well, if you think it’s just about information or product, then you probably aren’t reading any of my stuff anyway, because you wouldn’t believe in a storified view of the world.
So if there’s something in ‘brand’, and how a business makes you feel through what it does, then the question is, what really drives the brand?
Some will say the colours or the logos. And even the font.
But those are just signals of something deeper.
But if we look deeper, will see that it’s the story.
The colours, logos, and fonts simply try to represent the story. This is why you see so many businesses that get a brand ‘package’ start to freeze after a while. Because it’s deeper than that.
What drives the story?
“Structure and character are interlocked. The event structure of a story is created out of the choices that characters make under pressure and the actions they choose to take, while characters are the creatures who are revealed and changed by how they choose to act under pressure. If you change one, you change the other.” - Robert McKee
While we often ‘think’ it’s the coffee that we go back for, it’s usually how going to the cafe, or buying the beans makes us feel.
The deeper root of that brand, ain’t just the coffee beans, but the people, what they do, and our relationship with them.
What about boring companies?
When I was younger, I worked as an engineer for Boeing. It was my second to last corporate job, and at this point the pain had already set in, even though I didn’t have any kind of direction on what was next.
Anyway, this was the most ‘straight’ job you could have. Wear a certain uniform. Sit along a long row of desks. And when you go outside, because it was on an Air Force base, you had to walk between the painted lines. No photos et cetera.
Very strict.
But, every few days in the office, it was someone’s birthday. And when that happened they had to bring in a cake.
When the cake came out, people let loose.
Crass jokes, watercooler stories and unmentionables that aren’t a fit for an article.
When I think back to that time, I remember the work, but mostly, I remember the people. I can still see their face and what they stood for, because they were the characters in the story. And in a sense, the people were the brand.
Is it just me?
The other night I spoke with a group of cleaning businesses. I asked them in the chat who their favourite character was from any film or TV.
Cruella, The Joker, a few others popped up.
A whole bunch of people put Beth Dutton from Yellowstone.
They liked how she was flawed. And basically said that she made the whole series.
I gave an example of one of the cleaning companies that I had seen online. In a few seconds, I could give ten different points about this person’s character, her struggles, her values, her backstory, and what she stood for.
The people in the chat agreed.
And the business I spoke about does particularly well.
Sometimes there are instances where a business has such a huge, pre-existing brand that there’s no need for any compelling characters. These companies have customer service procedures, outsourced call centres, or chat bots.
These are not only the exception rather than the rule, but they ain’t typically the kinds of businesses you and I want to build. Plus, even a lot of these businesses are shifting.
In service businesses, brand is less about following the guidelines and the filters on the photos. It’s whether or not the characters in the world act in alignment with core values, and have a personality we can relate to.
When we look at a thriving service (and often, hospitality) business, we usually see a compelling character or team driving the mission forward. We have a strong relationship with all of that.
And there are a lot of factors, but when you look at a struggling business, you will often see a lack of a compelling character driving the mission forward. It can feel like a vacuum, or ‘flat.’
How do we bring out the character?
A lot of brand people will tell us that we need to be known, liked and trusted. While I think this is true, I find this slogan can lead to a flat character that is trying too hard to be ‘likeable’. Meaning, we strip away quirks, conflict or struggle, which deletes any hope of an interesting story or relationship.
Another way to look at it is to be ‘connected and respected.’
Respected for our skillset or service, and connected through our humanity.
Connection still requires trust. But this flip can get us thinking about how to bring out a real person with depth, rather that just a photo that could easily be a stock image.
At the risk of going too far here for the purposes of business, another thing we can think about is the concept of struggle, or pressure. When we think about Beth Dutton, her character is routinely exposed to deeper and deeper levels of pressure or struggle. Our relationship with her character deepens not because of her hair or accent. But because we see how she acts in these times of struggle.
So in a sense, we bring out the character by showing how the character does what they do, particularly when they’re under pressure. We have a story, and brand.
This gets back to what McKee was talking about earlier. The character and structure (or mission of your business) are interlinked.
When the character never has struggle, we end up focusing too much on ‘characterisation’, and not character. We get caught up in what they look like, or how they dress. Because there’s nothing else to grab on to. This creates a flat character.
In a sense, in the world of ‘personal brand’, bringing out the obstacles we face and the struggles we have overcome can be one of the strongest things we can do.
OK, enough theory. Let’s look at a few practical examples of how you can do this.
Example One
A little risk of being self-centred here. But if you’ve gotten to this point, you’ve put up with the crotchety emails of yours truly for a while. Or maybe you just landed here by accident. I don’t know. But either way, the final check I have with any writing, is to make sure there’s personality in it.
Like a ‘fact check’ but a ‘personality check.’
I’m so far on the other side of the whole AI thing, because it’s never my goal to be a reductionist that distills things down to the minimum, because that’s not how things are communicated. Nobody remembers what they read in the Encyclopaedia Britanica. To me, personality is a sign of health, and is really part of how we interact with each other.
Even in these articles, you already know where I worked, people I’ve worked with, views and opinions, et cetera.
So that’s your first option, is to learn to write with personality in your newsletter. Tell stories et cetera.
Example Two:
Valkyrie Gym about page. Hugo and team do a great job on social media with character, but for some people, social media can be a little much to start. In those cases, I suggest starting with the about page. At least give us a little humanity around the people that we’re going to be working with when we come in, right?
Anyway, on the about page, see how they have given some weaknesses, strengths, et cetera. Not only that, but with the GIF you get a little more context of how they move and what they do. They are loaded with personality.
Now this could be a bit strong for a lot of businesses. But you can pare it down. Either way, there’s a sense of a team, and they haven’t only focused on the qualifications and how ‘perfect’ the characters are, as if it’s some random LinkedIN post.
On social media, they also do a great job of bringing out the character of their clients as well. We’ll go more into customer success stories another time.
Example Three:
LORDS coffee is around the corner from me, and is a family owned and operated biz-ness headed up my friend Brownie AKA Mullet Lord and his wife Nicola.
This is probably worth a much bigger case study, because what we really see is a business story that originally kicked off from Brownie’s backstory overcoming some big struggles in life (You can listen here), and then valuing freedom and self expression.
So when you land on the site this is the ‘feeling’ that you get, and reflects the brand well.
Anyway, the cool thing that they do is story driven content on social media. And by that I mean literal short stories.
Ultimately, when you can tell a real story, you bring out the character at a deeper level, without having to tell us anything about them. Instead, it is shown in how they do what they do.
This is effective, but can be a big task if you’re starting out.
(Start by ‘wrapping’ regular content with a little bit of character, see the positive feedback, and ease into it that way.)
Summary
There’s a cliched line in marketing and business coaching that people do business with people. Problem with that is it isn’t too instructional.
When we look at what makes a compelling character in any story, we can see simple ways to do this in our businesses.
This doesn’t mean the business is ‘about us’. The service is priority, the change we make is key. However it does mean we can’t afford to have a flat business that is impossible to relate to.
For some businesses, this might go to level ten.
For others, it can be simply bringing out enough character for people to understand who you are, and how you do what you do.
We live in a world where quality of service is a prerequisite, but character and personality is a requirement.
Finding engaging stories for content and delivery
Yesterday I was talking with a guy who’s building a ‘suite’ of offers in the breath work-personal development space. In particular he’s working with A-players… High performers who are also biz-ness minded. Anyway, he’s doing a workshop in the next two months.
He brought up the age old problem of what to talk about at the start?
Turns out, a previous mentor had told him to start each workshop with a personal story, to build trust. Something about yourself. So that people get to know your struggles, or why you do what you do.
Makes sense.
We all know that telling stories at the front of a workshop, class, or even email can be helpful. But the problem he touched on, is that you run out of backstory, and, it ain’t that exciting to get up and talk about yourself directly.
In a lot of the articles, podcasts, et cetera, one thing I’ve yapped on about is how the character in a story is defined not by what they say, but how they do what they do. How they overcome struggles. Or their point of view on things. Or even what they stand for. Ideally, demonstrated through action.
One example I give a lot is how Tarantino will write twenty plus pages of ‘scrap’ dialogue between characters, just to get to ‘know’ them. To learn how they speak. To understand how they do what they do. Then he throws that out. It’s purely to define the characters for his own sake with the rest of the film.
Anyway, all of this is to say that when you relay any story, about something you saw, or something that happened, you are further defining your character. It doesn’t need to be backstory.
How do you find the stories?
Yesterday I was at the track - I’ve hired a coach for sprinting - and the coach brought her son along. I’d say he’s seven or eight. And he asked me what I do for work. I told him we help businesses grow and make more money. I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He was skateboarding, so I thought he might say an athlete, or something.
“Well, I’m already in business…”
I asked him what was the nature of his biz-ness?
“I find valuable things - I sharpen sticks for adventure games. I find balls and repair them… I fix up skateboards. I store them all in my locker at school. Then I rent them out to kids at $2 per day. There are other kids who have tried to open up businesses. One kid tries to rent out bicycles to the younger kids who are like, in preschool almost. But they can’t ride. It’s not a good business. And the teachers try to shut all of us down… They’re like the government (his words, lol). But we just tell them that it’s a game. And they can’t stop us from playing. I make around $39 dollars per day. It’s a lot of money.”
The kid was a hustling better than a lot of adults I know.
Anyway, I shared this story with the breathwork guy. And pointed out that the only reason I remembered it, was because it made me pay attention.
And the thing that made me pay attention?
Change, and conflict.
Sure, it was interesting that he was renting out sharpened sticks. But as soon as he said that there were other kids trying to hustle as well, and that the teachers were trying to shut the whole thing down, I was much more engaged. And couldn’t help but pay attention.
All I had to do then, is remember the story.
The Law of Conflict
We’ve covered before that the driver for almost all attention is not a ‘problem’, but ‘change.’ And specifically, the conflict, or potential conflict that ‘change’ creates. Conflict within ourselves. Conflict with others. The change and conflict cycle runs the entire news and media show.
When the kid talked about how they are going against the teachers to keep their enterprises running, that’s when the heart of the story and engagement appeared.
McKee teaches us about this in his book ’Story’.
“When the protagonist steps out of the inciting incident, he enters a world governed by the Law of Conflict. To wit: Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict.”
“Put another way, conflict is to storytelling what sound is to music. Both story and music are temporal arts, and the single most difficult task of the temporal artist is to hook our interest, hold our uninterrupted concentration, then carry us through time without an awareness of the passage of time.”
Conflict can be about status shifts, implied conflict, arguments, and suspense, which is really looming conflict on the horizon, such as a ticking clock, or an enemy moving closer to the protagonist.
Anyway, all of this is to say the thing we are looking for, is moments of change, tension, surprise, or conflict.
Once we can see the drivers for a story, we can start to collect them
It’s easy to look at great speakers or storytellers and think that somehow they just get this stuff. It just kind of pours out of them. And the better they are, the more natural it is, and the more gifted they must be.
Truth is, one of the key jobs of the compelling orator, or business person, is to build an arsenal of stories or parables.
This ain’t accidental. It’s something that we do on purpose, and work at daily.
People talk about ‘emptying the mind’. Well, if you want to have more compelling stories in delivery and content, it’s much more about expanding the mind. Adding more to it. Find things you’re interested in. Go out and create new experiences outside of social media, and bank stories from those experiences. ‘Filling the mind’ with experiences and stories is part of the job.
In saying that, there are three steps we can do to find more stories.
And I’ll get through this quickly. But basically, the more we practice these three, the better we get.
Step 1: ‘See’ a story, noticing conflict, change or curiosity.
Step 2: Log the story into a notebook or file
Step 3: Dress up the story
Step One - ‘See’ the Stories
A lot of people have written about this stuff at a much deeper level. Austin Kleon’s ‘Steal like an Artist’ is a helpful book. Draw on other people’s work, et cetera.
But this isn’t new.
Eugene Schwartz famously said, “You are not God, you don’t create anything from scratch. Instead, you ‘connect’ existing ideas in new ways” - I paraphrased the crap out of that.
John Cleese: “We don’t know where good ideas come from, but we know that it’s not from our laptop screen”.
It’s all the same message.
Get out there, consume the work of others. Interact with the world, and, you’ll have a constant source for your stories.
For me, I like to spearfish, train et cetera. So I regularly have stories about diving, sharks, whales. Whatever. So I’m constantly pounding out stories around that stuff. Then I have a dog who happens to have a lot of character. So I have stories about her. Then of course I’m working with a lot of unique business owners at any time, and I found early on that the stories that come from within your work are naturally going to be more valuable for your work because there’s already a lot of resonance there.
And in each case, first thing we’re doing is looking for things that make us pay attention.
And this is the great ‘gift’ (actually just a skillset that we develop) of the storyteller. It ain’t just the ‘telling’ of the story. It’s the ability to notice the event, and not just engage with it in real time. But ‘see’ it as fodder for the next email.
Soon you start to ‘see’ the stories more easily in the world around you. Just by practicing.
In short. If something makes you pay attention, or takes you by surprise. It’s probably going to take someone else by surprise as well, and is likely a good starting point for a story.
Step Two - Collect the Stories
One author that’s wildly prolific is Stephen King. I’m not a huge fan, but the way he comes up with stories is interesting. He just ‘starts’ with a scene, and then apparently, ‘sees where it’s going to go’.
So for example, I’m sitting at a desk right now. So you start with that. “He was sitting at the desk…” then you make something happen… “BANG, there was a loud noise down the street.” Maybe the guy ignores it, and keeps working…. “Then a soft knocking on the door….” And you just kind of evolve the story.
But if you think about it, that’s only really going to work in the world of fiction.
For us, we straddle business (non fiction) and entertainment. So instead of creating stories, we ‘collect’ stories.
And personally I don’t think this part gets enough attention. But how are you going to remember all the stories? You aren’t. So you create some kind of swipe file.
I heard - and I think it was from Dan Kennedy - about the idea of a ‘potato box’. It was either Kennedy, or one of his mentors, they had a big cardboard box for potatoes, and used this to throw newspaper clippings, articles, anything that was fodder for stories.
You need your potato box.
For me, my potato box is really just the ‘notes’ program on my computer. Sometimes I’ll even email the ideas to myself.
Plus a bunch of diaries. I’ve probably gone through ten or fifteen diaries. This ain’t any thing special. There’s no dumping stream of consciousness, or deep journal entries. Nothing wrong with that. But these diaries are really just for collecting the kernels of what happened. A few notes that help to remember the story: Who was involved, what happened, what were some specific points that stood out?
Once we have the stories, we get to dress them up…
Step Three - Dressing Up the Story
Before I sat down to write this, I saw a short video.
A yellow Nissan parked in a carpark next to a blue Toyota. The lady in the Nissan opened her door and it bumped the Toyota. The other woman saw it, and to retaliate, she opened her door into the Nissan, and put a bigger dent in it. Well, the whole thing escalated into a raging door slamming match. Soon, they were running their cars into each other in the carpark. Ramming each other. All the while, people in the carpark were just watching, holding onto their groceries. And the line under the video was “When you meet someone who matches your energy.”
In the skit, not only was there some conflict, but the story was ‘dressed up.’ The women were a little too enraged. The cars swiping at each other were a little too violent. It was ridiculous, but, still tied close enough to something we can imagine happening.
That story of the cars has no relevance to what we’re covering, but the message is in the medium.
I’ve long believed that, because we work with mediums that are ‘limited’, we have a creative license to dress up the stories.
What does that mean?
We need to add drama, to counterbalance the ‘flat-ness’ of media platforms.
If you and go through an actual experience together, maybe we’re out diving and something exciting happens. Then we both experience that ‘story’ at full definition. Then later, we ‘tell’ the story to someone else. Well, now it’s second hand. We ‘lose’ some of the experiential side of it. No matter how hard we try to be specific. From there, it just gets worse. Print media, videos, audio… Each time, we lose fidelity and depth.
This ain’t a bad thing.
And, it allows us to tell the stories en masse. But it means we need to practice the ‘telling’ of the story. And in that process, we can dress it up a little bit. Especially elements that create more conflict.
Point out the details. Make the character a little taller. Create tension with some pauses.
If you need some help with this idea, one place to look at is the news. The news ‘story formula’ is to point out a change, and then highlight the problem this may create, and in the process, either elevate, or just plain ‘create’ conflict.
Why? Because it sells.
So in ever story, we can bring out, dress up, or ‘highlight’ internal conflict for the character, or external conflict.
I asked the guy if he had any interesting things happen that week at work.
He said something came up with his admin staff, and that they needed to re-jig a bunch of systems to make the business run smoothly, because he could have lost this staff member.
And I pointed out that in his little story, there were two or three points of conflict.
It was engaging. Even entertaining.
He realised he had what he was looking for all along. Or as I like to say with this stuff, the diamonds are under your feet. We just need to practice finding them.
There’s a famous line by Tony Robbins, and this won’t be exactly right, but close:
“80% of my work is in entertainment. If I can do that well, then I might have a chance to deliver the 20% in education”.
And so it is with all of use in service businesses (and even some hospitality) when we work more directly with a client or customer. Only a small part of what we do is actually educating or giving direct value.
A lot of the other stuff is entertainment.
How we welcome someone in. The stories we tell from a stage or at the start of a class. The humour we can infuse into the end of the consultation. Or even how we can connect with small stories in emails or articles.
All of this is a key part of becoming a more engaging service provider, and building deeper relationships that help build a business well into the future.
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Attracting clients in the trust economy
I saw an article pop up ‘has the influencer bubble burst?’ Saying that the age of the influencer appears to be dying.
It talked about how last year a Philadelphia-based YouTuber had six figures worth of brand deals canceled in thirty days. He has half a million followers, and makes money on YouTube by telling other people how make money on YouTube...
“For influencers, brand deals have dried up in the past year. Most of my friends who were charging $30k per video are struggling to fill their sponsor slots for $10k.”
Well, on paper, still seems decent money to post a video?
But we have to remember that their whole brand is built off of upholding a lifestyle that’s more like $20k/month. Jets, houses. Whatever.
They went on to point to how the more relatable influencers doing better. Basically those with a bit more of a 3D, and less plastic personality. And then of course there’s the anti-influencer movement, where they tell you ‘not to buy.’ (Repulsion can be a form of attraction).
My take is that the influencer show will run on, with the key characters dropping off every 3-5 years with little harm. And those that last, will either be real people, or, 'bigger' influencers whose platform is actually created by institutions who prop them up despite a lack of either talent or quality product. The word 'influencer' ain't accidental. They’re telling you what they are. Their primary role is to be one link of persuasion in the money flow or narrative chain.
Anyway, all this alongside the obscene increase in scams we all get (via SMS, voicemail, email, Facebook marketplace to name a few), means the walls of the ‘whole thing may’ be cracking. Or at least shifting.
What does ‘the whole thing’ mean?
The trust walls are higher than ever. As faux influencers fall each week, people continue to wake up to the game that’s been played for the last ten years. Already, every email, post, website, and meeting ain't ‘looked at’ the way it was five years ago.
Even Price Waterhouse Coopers (who, do screw a lot of things up), got this one right in their consumer indexes - pointing to a 20%+ increase in the importance of ‘trust’ when buying, from 2020 to 2022.
Trust in all major bodies (media, social media, governments, biz-ness) has been plummeting for years. Up to 50% depending on your source.
The link between ‘trust’, media, and health and wellbeing went to a new level in 2020.
I just saw one study over in the U.S, that over 50% of the population doesn’t just ‘not trust’ the media. But they believe they are there to actively confuse the population. I’m just the messenger.
On the biz-ness side?
If correct, this would see a recalibration of what ‘good’ business looks like. And a shift in trust would look a lot like a ‘risk off’ environment. But it ain’t quite the same. Risk off means a move to cash or safe havens. That may be happening a little. But my feeling is that this is more of a reallocation of risk and a slower buying cycle. Meaning, some businesses are thriving at record highs (even in risk on industries), others are struggling to cut through.
Things rarely sell because they sound good on a singular instagram post. Or because they look good. They have to pass a gauntlet of tests that tap back into the basic human nature on how we build desire and trust over time.
Social media marketers are telling brands that they need to be more ‘human’.
They need to have their ‘values’ clear. But it’s deeper than that…
Who are the people behind the business? Is there a clear story pointing to a better future?
[We see this with both new, and bigger clients as we speak, especially in health, money, or support work. What does trust look like not just personally, but culturally in that space? Not just surface level, but behaviourally, and in marketing and sales.]
This ain’t complicated, but for sure it takes a bit more work with marketing.
A marketing plan for a bigger business we work with might now have components across video, written, and in person. And, in several cases, direct mail. While it may have been just YouTube and ads previously.
New businesses may have a dream of popping only on instagram, but our marketing model suggests picking at least two out of three between social, asset building (long form content), and live networking.
Even with simple, single channel marketing, having enough depth, and a clear story on what the business is about is key.
A lot of gurus talk about the attention economy.
Gary Vee, et cetera. These guys have obviously done very well and have been a linchpin in crafting part of the narrative (particular NFT’s, AI, et cetera).
But if we think in terms of ‘attention’ only, we end up chasing, rather than building trust or vision. I think of it more like a vision economy than an attention economy. We might notice the stimulus, but we won’t go deeper unless there are enough dominos lined up to create vision.
We’ve seen businesses go viral multiple times on short form platforms, with little to no business impact from that. I know of others through mutual contacts, with 1M+ followers, but no revenue.
Are the numbers real? In some cases yes. But still, attention is different from trust.
The fundamentals have been here since the start, but as a culture, we’re getting more sensitive.
More sensitive to the content, and to the platforms. There’s the cliché line that when you watch a little kid (I saw this again the other day), they can already swipe on the iPads at one or two years old. Our consciousness is getting more tuned to the digital age.
If you read the RA MA article, Guru Jagat used to speak of this sensitivity as well as part of the shift to the Technology Age. The big role of the meditation was to be able to clean the subconscious mind effectively, to deal with this stuff and stay sharp.
But all of that’s to say that by now, we all noticed the saturation of claims and false promises at some stage. So not much gets past the BS detector.
The good side?
A recalibration of what ‘good’ business looks like.
A long time ago when I owned the gym and started writing about health stuff, I used to love the work of Dr. Steven Porges. Particularly, his stuff on neuroception. Our natural human ability (at birth) to asses threats. Every time Ruby goes to see her niece, she tells me how she’s one of the few people the baby will smile at straight away. Babies are great at that. So are dogs. Anyway, back then I liked that stuff because if you want results at a gym, I figured you need to have a generally ‘positive’ perception of your environment.
Anyway, we’re just getting better at this in the online and business space.
We’re better at picking up cues throughout the whole buying journey as to whether we move forward with the purchase.
Anyway, in my limited, but I dare say accurate opinion, this is good.
But even if you see it as a negative because some of the old game ‘tactics’ ain’t working the same, as McKee teaches us, every negative in the story can set up a positive.
Example:
The NFT bubble has already set up a pendulum swing back to a small, but growing appreciation of real art that celebrates beauty and nature.
The AI copywriting swing is already putting the wheels in motion for those who appreciate and want to learn how to write well.
The fast talkers on Facebook ads are giving people a better understanding of what a calm nervous system looks like, from someone who isn’t after a quick buck.
(Side note, the music seems a little stuck in a loop since the 2000’s? But hopefully that comes back around as well…)
A whole new (old) set of skills are coming back into the forefront:
Writing. Speaking. And getting off the sidelines, to convey quality ideas and stories with others.
My guess? In that order.
Now you might say, “well that’s always been the case.” Sure. Even Dan Pink wrote about it in his pop classic, A Whole New Mind, and a shift to the conceptual age. As have many others. But most of these predictions were largely off the back of the information age, rather than a splintering of trust.
Anyway, this can all feel like ‘swimming upstream.’ It takes a little more effort to clarify the business story. More effort to do the marketing. More effort to learn how to sell in a clean way.
Still, savvy business owners are seeing that building sustainable, rewarding businesses over time ain’t just ‘possible’ but there’s actually a process.
Fundamental skills that have been around for decades. Just applied to media in a slightly different way.
The future is probably a little different, but the future is bright.
Spectator to doer: Finding your inciting incident
One of my favourite old TV shows is Seinfeld. It turns out, that there’s a few parts of the show that were totally improvised, or accidental. For example, the way that Kramer comes through the door in a sliding rush was done the first time because Kramer missed his cue. It was such a hit, that it became it’s own sub-thread in the story. He continued to develop it until he could slide from the doorway all the way to the kitchen.
When Kramer missed the cue, it became an ‘inciting incident’ in the story.
It was a catalyst that knocked him off kilter. And shifted the direction of the show in a small, but key way.
In business, we’re often looking for ways to motivate ourselves.
Or ways to stay accountable.
We think that this should be coming from within. From some internal drive that some people have, and others don’t.
But usually, the spark for motivation comes from outside of us. We see something. We hear about something. Or we meet someone, and that creates a vision that stirs enough emotion to create movement.
We have an inciting incident in our lives, that knocks us out of balance, and leads to action.
Successful business owners and creators don’t just sit there with infinite piles of motivation. They are just very good at finding these catalysts.
The root of the word motivate is “to stimulate toward action, act as the inciting cause of”
And later, “inner or social stimulus for action”.
Motivation then, is the starter of action. It ain’t the continuation of action. It’s the catalyst.
How do we get this stimulus to move from spectator to ‘doer?’
Do we need more energy? Most likely. The further we go, the more we learn that more energy at a cultural, or physiological level is at the heart of progress and creativity, with the reverse also being true.
Do we need more information? For most of us, that’s now debunked. While some people still trawl through video courses, they already know that it’s a distraction, and it creates more contempt for the whole thing as the information pours in, and there ain’t any more action on the other side of it.
We need to break routine
In story structure, an inciting incident is the beginning of a story.
Robert McKee outlines this well:
“The inciting incident launches a story by upsetting the equilibrium of the protagonist’s life and throwing the story’s core value either positively or negatively, but decisively, out of kilter. This turning point initiates the events that follow and propels the protagonist into action.”
Prior to the inciting incident, the protagonist, or lead character, is sitting in balance.
They may have problems, desires, or things that they want to do. But those positive forces are ‘in balance’ with the negative forces that stop movement: Perceived risk, fear, comfort, inertia to stay where we are, uncertainty, et cetera.
This is where a lot of people sit. On one side there are dreams and desires. But on the other, narratives from different angles that create a sense of fear and risk. So there is a long term equilibrium, that slowly morphs into groundhog day.
They become spectators.
It’s like Batman sitting in his lair, brooding. Sure he can go save people. But why? There will just be more crime in Gotham. Why bother?
The inciting incident ‘shocks’ the character out of balance: The Joker arrives on the scene. Bane arrives on the scene. Batman is suddenly, and necessarily moved into action.
But these events don’t come from a life of routine
In everyday life, with a lot going on, and a fair bit of stress, there’s often no energetic reason to change our path, unless we have a strong inciting incident. Basically, we need to put ourselves in the position to get knocked out of balance in life.
I get to interview a lot of business owners about their backstory
Quite often - not all the time - those who are the most successful have had a strong inciting incident in their past.
They grew up very poor.
Their first business went bankrupt.
They had an injury or illness.
A lot of times they had a strong, negative inciting incident, that knocks the character deeply out of balance, propelling them into a positive action over time. Which, in the case of business, can be a good thing.
Then, as each chapter of their story is complete, or after they reach each goal, successful business owners, and generally the people we look up to, seek out more catalysts to spark the next step of the journey.
It doesn’t just happen. They get out and meet people.
They go travelling.
They have trained themselves to constantly be looking for inciting incidents, or catalysts.
They are trying to knock themselves off kilter, knowing that the next stage of growth won’t just ‘happen’, but will often start from outside of themselves, and then they can create a vision around that, and continue to drive forward.
Do all inciting incidents need to be negative?
We started watching a series called Yellowstone a while back. We haven’t finished it. But basically what happened was, the family on the Dutton Ranch was in balance. Sure there was a mild feud going on. But it wasn’t at a tipping point.
But, in one scene in the first episode, one of the sons was killed off.
This was the obvious inciting incident, which kicked off the main story line of saving the ranch and the family.
Negative inciting incidents like that can be powerful.
But positive can work as well. Getting married. Moving overseas. A holiday, et cetera. Seeing something beyond what you thought was possible.
Either way, an inciting incident always leads to action. Because if it doesn’t it’s not an inciting incident. It’s just an event that leaves everything in equilibrium.
People as ‘catalysts’ or inciting incidents
Personally, my biggest shifts in life have come from people who have been inciting incidents for my life. My mentors and teachers.
People who are very prolific.
Or very energised. So just being around them knocks me out of balance, and gets me thinking about the next idea.
For example. When I left corporate, I had no job but I needed a way to support myself, so I walked around retail stores, and found a part time job moving shoe boxes. The job paid $20 cash per hour. Which was all that I needed then.
But the real inciting incident, was the owner of the store. His name was Luke. He was great at sales, because he was so good at nurturing vision with customers. And he made me ‘see’ that people love to buy, and selling is a good thing.
When we meet someone that inspires us like that, we are shocked into action by seeing what’s possible, and actually attainable. It creates vision, and we can’t help but shift our course.
Finding inciting incidents
One of the hardest periods for me mentally, was actually when we were doing pretty well in business.
We had the gym, revenue was great. We had a pretty good lifestyle.
But I was grinding. I would go from home to the gym, and maybe to the cafe. And just stay inside of those four walls.
I would look on social media for inspiration. But it was just flashy images and people talking.
If you think about this in a typical story arc, the character expanded to reach a certain level of success. But then they started to contract. Instead of seeking more inciting incidents, they start to protect what they have, and remain ‘closed off’.
And what they need, is a catalyst for a second ‘expansion.’
It sounds small, but the way that I broke out of that was, I started inviting other gym owners over to train. We would do a session. Talk about ideas. And it would spark new directions. I started to run some different workshops and then retreats. This led to a coaching program. And eventually, it led to us deciding to sell the gym and move north to where it was warmer.
The reason the first period was so difficult, was because there was no inciting incident. Without a catalyst, or something to spark action, the character just flounders.
Before a story, physically, socially, or otherwise the character rests in a state of balance.
Life is in balance.
Sure the protagonist has her daily ups and downs. But she’s in control of her existence. Something must happen in her world, for a new story to begin. In a way, this forces her into action.
Well, our job then, as visionaries and business owners, isn’t to create ideas out of thin air.
Or to suddenly wake up, and change everything.
Our job is to ‘run into’ catalysts and create vision. Things that spark our thinking, and force us out of equilibrium.
The shift from spectator to doer ain’t about summoning motivation from within. Or getting more hype. It’s rare to wake up and suddenly be motivated in any meaningful way that lasts.
Because as long as life is in balance, and we have control over everything, then there is no story. Rather than beating ourselves up for not having the motivation to become a ‘doer’, what we need to do is put ourselves in a position for a catalyst to happen.
‘Doers’ are constantly looking at this.
They’re talking to people from all walks of life. They are calling people back. They are showing up at events. They lean in. Not because they have to. But because they know that a little moment, conversation or event can be exactly what they need.
And ‘tip’ them into the next leg of their story.
Of course it’s easy for me to say this as a business coach. But an easy option is to enrol in a course. Go meet new people. Travel. Disrupt routine enough to open a doorway for something to knock you out of balance.
This forces you to take action, and a new story begins.
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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