that

play into this? I think that happened in the season that I was figuring out the stuff that would eventually go into A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, which is essentially that not unlike editing a work of fiction to make it more interesting – You can take the principles that you're using to edit a work of fiction to make it more interesting to the reader and actually apply them to your life.

For example, if you handed me – well, not you, Michael, because I think both of you would probably write a pretty good novel.

But let's say an amateur handed me a novel and said, I'm really close, but it's not working.

Can you, not being so close to the book, read it and just give me some tips? I would probably say things like, it is not clear to me what the hero wants.

You know, you've got a great hero.

They're charming.

Yeah.

[upbeat music] Hey, everybody.

It's me, Donald Miller, and we are certainly in unprecedented times.

I mean, really, nobody's experienced anything like this.

Certainly we've had situations like this, but we haven't had situations like this and the ability to communicate so much with each other, and so communication becomes incredibly important.

Leaders, people who other people kind of depend on, uh, need to be very specific about their communication.

So there are really tool... two things I talk about.

Okay.

And so th- that's, that's why, why I believe in soundbites.

And I do believe that most businesses, most entrepreneurs, most leaders, you know, most politicians for sure-That's the part of the messaging campaign they're missing.

In other words, you...

They can sit down for an hour and explain what they're offering or what they're about or how- or their story, all of that, but they can't get me to sit down and listen to them for an hour.

And so what's often missing is just that curiosity soundbite that says, "Hey, wait, I'm, I'm curious.

Tell, tell me more about that." Uh, and when we help them come up with those soundbites, the conversation changes dramatically.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

But listen, if I build a brand as big as Patagonia, and I've made clothes, and I've had Patagonia clothes that are just as well-made as Patagonia and, and people are finding it, at that point, you know, we are deep, deep into a relationship with this brand, and I might actually be curious about your backstory.

The amateur leads with it, and that's where I think you, you sort of make a mistake there.

I think, um, going back to the dating analogy, and I think all business, businesses are built on relationships, and even if your brand has a relationship, an ethos with your, your customers, it needs to start by listening, understanding.

And, and it's amazing, you know, th- those same shows of hands from those women who suffered those dates with guys who only talked about themselves.

If they met a guy who had the strength and secureness to, for the first several dates, to kind of only ask you questions and drill down and say, "Well, tell me about that," and get to know you, she's actually learning quite a bit from that man.

She's learning that he's strong, that he's competent, that he can, that he can hold a conversation, that he's going to be interested in her.

[laughs]

So for everyone here that's in the chat, that's listening, that's watching all the things, if they, for some reason, don't know about what StoryBrand is and the enormous impact that it has, can you just break it down? What is it that you do?

Well, years ago, I started noticing that the reason people bought things was not because of brand colors or logos or style guides or any of that.

In fact, probably every person watching right now has bought something from Amazon.com in the last week, maybe even the last hour.

And that is an ugly website.

It's just an ugly website.

It's not an impressive logo, none of that.

But it's text heavy, lots of text.

So now how do you make somebody the hero and how do you do all the story stuff and all of that within this AI world?