The 5 Soundbites That Make People Buy 😳 Donald Miller from StoryBrand at Guru Conference | Ep. 470

0:00Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast from marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. All right, this is a special episode of Do This, Not That. This is a conversation I had with Donald Miller during Guru Conference that just happened. And he taught me so much in just a few minutes about how to really clarify your message. He is the founder of StoryBrand. He's a huge deal. And I just wanted to take that discussion and release it as an episode because I got so much out of it.

0:39I hope you do too. Check it out. We have one of the industry giants here. This is going to be an incredible discussion. So who do we got? We got Donald Miller. Now, I would imagine 99 % of you know who Donald Miller is. But if you don't, he is the founder and CEO of StoryBrand. And he's not only the best-selling author of like a zillion books, But do you realize that his books collectively have spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list? That is like, think about that for a second. And his company, StoryBrand and CoachBuilder, they help businesses and leaders really clarify their messaging by using this amazing structure.

1:18And over 1 million business leaders have discovered Donald Miller's powerful StoryBrand, this whole framework. He's a genuine, amazing guy, a monster in the marketing world. I am so excited to have you here. Donald, welcome to the stage. Thanks so much for having me, Jay. Good to be with you guys. This is awesome. All right. 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.

2:02In fact, probably every person watching me 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. And I realized that when I buy something, it's because I read some words that make me want to buy something. Well, as a writer, and I've written about 15 to 20 books, I don't know, but I've written a lot of books. I'm obsessed with words and how words make things happen in people's minds. And I began to, about 10 years ago, apply that to companies and to businesses and to product copy and taglines and all that kind of stuff.

2:41And what we noticed really quickly was the more that we released the cognitive load of words, the more people bought. And what I mean by that is if you make people think they're not going to buy from you. And so I created a framework called the StoryBrand framework that reduces the cognitive load that people will encounter in order to buy something. And we saw massive increases in sales. For example, a company came to me recently. They dominate the aquarium market in pet stores like PetSmart, Petco. They sell all the aquariums. They sell the charcoal. They sell the fish filter. They sell everything but the fish.

3:18And they came to me and said, look, we have hobbyists buying our equipment. We don't have families, but people who walk into Petsmart and Petco, they're families. And we got to break into the family market. Can you help us? And I said, yeah, we spent a day together. But at the end of the day, I said, yeah, three words. Kids love aquariums. Kids love aquariums. Put kids love aquariums on the aquariums, on the fish food, on everything that you sell. Kids love aquariums. Put it on the signage. And they were like, are you being serious right now? You think three words are really going to break us into a new market?

3:48I said, yes, they will. They test marketed that in a test market. They put kids love aquariums everywhere. Ninety nine percent increase in sales. And if you think about it, what it that's a hundred million dollar market. So you're talking about one hundred million to one hundred ninety nine million with no additional capital expenditure. Just words. What that what actually happened there was they decreased the cognitive load. When somebody when a dad walks in with their kids and they're thinking about getting a bunny or a puppy or a cat, but they know the thing is going to poop all over the house.

4:19They don't want to do it. They see the words kids love aquariums. You didn't make them think. The more you make somebody think, the less they are going to buy from you. The problem that everybody watching me, especially if you're any sort of thought leader or any sort of leader at all, you want to sound smart and sophisticated, which is the exact opposite what you need to do to decrease cognitive load. You need to sound as simple as possible. And you need to sound so simple that nobody has to think to figure it out. it turns out that's a very hard thing to do. And so StoryBrand is a framework that you filter your message through and it reduces the cognitive load and increases sales.

5:00You know, when I first heard of StoryBrand, which is a while back now, I said, oh, this is going to make me write a lot more stuff. I have to use a lot more words. I have to create this story, this narrative, all this stuff. And I'm like, I can't even get a sentence out properly, let alone craft the whole story. And And then you start to layer in this idea of you having a hero in the story. But then as I started to consume everything, what you're saying is really the opposite almost of, yes, it's a story. But you're really saying, when you talk about cognitive load, are you talking about shrinking this down to the fewest words possible?

5:34Yes. I'm literally talking about inviting customers into a story using five soundbites. That's it. And there are specific soundbites. There's the problem soundbite, empathy, answer, change, and end result. Those five soundbites will effectively invite customers into a story. By the way, you don't want to tell your story. Everybody listen to me. Don't tell your story. Invite customers into a story. They are the hero of the story. You are the guide helping the hero win. So let me explain. Every story is the same. It is a character walking along at peace and stability. That character falls into a hole.

6:16Their peace is destabilized. A guide comes along, says, I'm so sorry you're in that hole, throws them a rope. The hero climbs out of the hole and they are restabilized to a sense of peace. Only they've been transformed and they're a better version of themselves. That is every movie you have ever seen. Now, sometimes it's a group protagonist. Sometimes it's a single protagonist. Sometimes there are multiple guides throwing multiple ropes. But it doesn't matter. That's the story. So as this relates to you building a business, it's your customer is at peace. They've fallen into a hole. So the very first thing you want to do is a problem soundbite so you own the hole.

6:56You want to own a problem in your customer's mind. Your product is the rope being thrown into the hole. They climb out of the hole, and you give them a transformation. They are a better version of themselves having climbed out of the hole. You do that with five soundbites. Problem is the hole you're in. Empathy is me positioning myself as a guide. Answer is the rope being thrown in the hole. Change is the transformation you experience after coming out of the hole. And end result is the happy ever after scene that you get to experience. It's just five soundbites. Now, the beautiful thing is you take those five soundbites and you populate all of your marketing, your landing pages, your websites, your social media, your lead generators, your YouTube scripts.

7:36All of it need to come back to those five soundbites being repeated over and over and over again. a million times until you own that hole and anybody who falls in that hole calls you and gives you money. All right. This is amazing. And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but does this apply to business to business, nonprofit, consumer, small business, big business? Does this apply to every size, every industry? This applies to business to business, business to consumer, e-commerce. It applies to anybody who uses words to try to convince somebody else to do something. All right, so let me layer something in here because a lot of people that are here today are like, this is amazing.

8:17I love this reframe, but my company is a B2B plumbing supply company or my company is a SaaS platform and our platform does 10 different things. And I feel like we're solving all these different problems. How do you boil it down so you're able to articulate it and cut that cognitive load when companies think a senior leadership thinks they're doing so much and they can't just boil it down to this one thing? You've got to. A story cannot be about 10 different things. If Jason Bourne wants to know who he is and lose 30 pounds and marry the girl and adopt a cat, we have lost the plot. You have dramatically increased the cognitive load of the moviegoing audience and they won't like the movie.

8:58They just won't know why they don't like it. It's because you're making them think. A great example is the Aura Ring. This is not an Aura Ring. This is just my wedding ring. But an Aura Ring is a Fitbit for your finger. It measures your steps. It measures your heart rate. It calculates your HRV. It helps you figure out how to optimize your sleep. I wore one for a year or so and really loved it. What they figured out was if they stopped talking about the 10 things that the Oura Ring does. And they only pick one thing, which they chose sleep. And they call it a sleep lab on your finger. Then people buy the Oura Ring to get better sleep and to monitor their sleep.

9:42And they discover after they buy it, all of these other things that it does. What they discovered when they narrowed down and owned one problem rather than trying to own 10 problem, is their sales dramatically increased. So you've got to solve one problem in the audience and then later explain everything else. Why? Because the smaller the cognitive load at the point of introduction, the more likely people will buy from you and discover more later. If you lead with all 10 things, you might as well lead with nothing. So yes, it's very important that a soundbite helps you reduce the cognitive load right off the bat.

10:25And then after you're in a relationship with them, you have earned the right to explain more. But I would say the number one problem most people deal with is they try to explain all the benefit and value up front, and all they're doing is making people think. Okay, I want to go off the script first thing because now I'm just curious for my own business, quite frankly. I love this idea. It's almost like, I don't want to say it's like a Trojan horse in, but it's like you lead with this one thing. It is. That's a great way to say it. Okay. So it's like Apple leads with a phone. Now all the other stuff I spend with Apple or whatever.

10:58So now I got them in. Okay. They bought the first product, but they do have these 10 other things to sell them. And now they're a little more invested in my company. At that point, am I still going one by one saying, okay, here's the next problem I want to solve them. I'm doing like a one, this one next service. Or am I saying, by the way, here's the 10 other things. Now you pick what you find most interesting. Yeah, I would say let's get them to the other side of the paywall first. And then let's blow them away with the additional value that they're getting. Let's not blow them away with the additional value to get them to buy.

11:34That's the mistake. And it's a counterintuitive mistake. You would think, well, let's explain the 25 things they get. No, explain the one thing because they're not giving us any sort of time to explain the rest. Let me tell you the ramifications of this. I'm not a Republican or a Democrat. American politics are very divisive. Jeb Bush wrote a book on immigration. Donald Trump had a soundbite. The soundbite beat the book. Build a wall beat a comprehensive plan on immigration. Is that right? No, that's not right. Is that good? No, that's not good. Is that a fact? That's a fact. So you have to understand nobody is sitting down, pouring a glass of scotch, giving you three hours to wonder whether they should buy your product.

12:20They are responding to a soundbite. And if you don't have that soundbite down, they will go to the competition who is inferior to you, who delivers less value for more money, and they will buy from them instead of from you because they understand the offer. That's so powerful. And it bleeds into this discussion about AI. Let's pivot to AI for a second, because when I think about StoryBrand, I'm like, okay, my website is going to say this, and my content's going to say this and all these wonderful things are going to happen. But now I go on ChatGPT, I need help with whatever. And it's giving me the answer or the companies with their content right there.

13:00And I don't leave ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexer or any of it. I don't leave. I stay on the AI tool. 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? Yeah, so the way you do that is you come up with the sound bites first. Problem, empathy, answer, change, end result. Spells out peace because you're returning your hero customer to peace. So you figure those out. And I'll give you an example. I worked with a company called YNAB. You need a budget. It's a$50 million budgeting application that you get in the app store, digital product.

13:37And we came up with the, they were coming to me saying, it's really not about budgeting. It's about spending. We don't like the word budget. Budget feels restrictive. We don't want to use that. We don't want to, you know, all these nuanced, sophisticated messaging ideas that were going to cost way too many cognitive cognitive calories. So their cognitive load was ridiculously high. So what we did is we said, OK, problem. Have you ever worried about money? That's it. That's the soundbite. Have you ever worried about money? They now own the worried about money whole. Now, how many people have ever worried about money?

14:14What percentage of the population of human beings? 100%. 100%. So they now own 100%. If you ever worry about money, what you're trying to do is trigger anybody who worries about money buys my product. Anybody who looks out a window and sees it's dirty buys my window washing solution. Anybody who's having an argument in their marriage buys my therapy. You need to own a specific problem, and it cannot be vague. It cannot be vague. It's got to be very, very specific. Meaning if I were a dog trainer, I wouldn't sell dog training. what i would sell is does your dog bark when somebody knocks at the door that's it now you own that hole now how many people own that hole i mean everybody knows they're the only one right they can steal that to 10 million dollars in certifications of dog trainings if they want to because they own a hole now when you own that hole here's how you own that hole you come up with the soundbite and then you disseminate that soundbite relentlessly every time you're on camera you say it.

15:11You put it on the back of your business card. You put it on your lead generators. You put it on your website. That is where AI starts picking up on the fact that you own that hole. You go and you hire a really cheap company to release a press release. You never get any videos, but we know that AI looks for press releases. You see what I'm saying? Now you're training AI to think of you when it thinks of that hole. If you own 10 holes, it's going to think of you 10 times less. If you use different language, it's going to think of you 50 times less because you said it in 50 different ways. So you're training AI with repetition of the exact same soundbite.

15:52And then, of course, you do the same with empathy, answer, change, and result. And now you own the story of that person getting out of that hole. I think that's so valuable. And I want everyone to really understand what that all means. Like, even in my own business, we've been putting out certain facts or statements over and over and over and over again. Now I'm going to chat to PT and ask things. It's coming back to me like a boomerang. I'm seeing it answer with the information that we've just been putting out there. So I'm curious about something. Let's say you work in a business with 100 people, 5 ,000 people, bigger businesses, whatever.

16:23Is it important to get that tagline, that thing out that everybody is marching and using it and saying it and putting out their social posts, everything, because it helps to get the LLMs, the large language models to then grab it. Is that the way to think about it? it is critical that you get your entire team answering the question the right way. So if I ask, if you have 100 employees, and I pull them all into an office one by one, and I say, what do you do? I want them all to say the same thing. If I say, what problem do you solve? I want them all to say the same thing. If you say, how do you transform a customer?

16:56I want them all to say the same thing. If you say, hey, what's the climactic scene, the happy ever after your customer gets to experience that they buy your product? They all need to say the same thing. So that in itself is converting your entire team from the janitor to the CEO into a sales force. And the only way to do that is you repeat the same thing over and over until they begin to repeat it back to you. So every good messaging campaign is an exercise in memorization. What it actually takes is coming up with the right soundbites and then ridiculous discipline and repeating those soundbites.

17:31The CEO should repeat those five soundbites in every meeting, in every keynote presentation, in every video, in text on the retail wall, in every commercial. You know, it's about repeating the soundbites. And the more you repeat soundbites, the more you convert, first, your team, and second, your customers. Now, your customers say, why do you buy from Geico? Well, they could save me 15 % on car insurance. How did they get the public to know that? $240 million in advertising spend every year in which they repeat the same soundbite. And did they grow? They grow exponentially. By the way, that was a Warren Buffett move.

18:09He bought the company, came up with the soundbites, went from about$11 million in advertising to $240 million in advertising in order to get the public to memorize and repeat the offer. And he makes billions because he did it. And you can do the same thing with a small company. Would you say that that's a fail that you say, okay, somebody reaches out StoryBrand, like I want to spend the day with Donald Miller, and they have a decent-sized company, and you do all this work, and then they're not proliferating it internally, just lives within the marketing unit, if you will. Is that a recipe for failure?

18:43Do you see that a lot? Yes. What about you might? Nuance is a recipe for failure. Nuance, complexity, sophistication is a recipe for failure. If you try to sound sophisticated, you're going to fail. It needs to be simple. You know, I was talking to a real estate agent recently. He said, Don, how would I differentiate myself? I said, well, when you're at a cocktail party and somebody says, what do you do? What do you say? And they said, well, I tell them I'm a real estate agent. And I said, OK, that's terrible. But tell me, what else do you say after that? You know, what's your what's your differentiator?

19:15Well, I can help them find my dream home. I said, OK, well, now we're getting somewhere. If I ask you what you do, here's what I want you to say. And get the statistics right. I'm going to make up statistics, but they're probably true or somewhere in the neighborhood. I would say somebody says, Don, what do you do? I would say, well, 87 percent of people live their entire life and they never get to live in their dream home. I make sure they get to live in their dream home. I'm a real estate agent. Cool. He's going to own a crisis that 87 percent of people never get to live in their dream home.

19:49Now he's not a real estate agent. He's a man on a mission. And that mission is making sure that you, as the hero, experience a climactic scene where you are living in your dream home. That's called inviting a customer into a story in which I play the guide and they are the hero and they no longer have to live in a hole. And he did it with a soundbite. So that's what we're looking for for everybody watching this video. What is your soundbite in which you own the hole and you get the hero out of the hole? Dude, this is great. This whole getting out of the whole thing, this is amazing. So, all right, I want to talk a little bit more about AI for a second here because I got an incredible writer here, a New York Times bestselling author.

20:31And what is Donald Miller's take on going to AI and having it help you write stuff? Are we anti? Do you never use it for that? Where are you at on this? I love AI. I absolutely, I adore AI. However, AI is a freshman in college who thinks a little too linear, and I need to know what I'm looking for to know whether it's right. So if I say I'm a real estate agent, how should I introduce myself? It is not going to give me the right answer. But if I say I'm a real estate agent and I want to introduce myself, but I want to start with the problem because it's such a great hook. And I want to own that problem.

21:17Give me 10 different examples of problems I could own as a real estate agent. It's going to give you 10 examples. You're going to choose one. And then you're going to go in and say, hey, I really like this one. Can you boil this down to a soundbite? You know what? That soundbite is too nuanced. You got cute and clever with me. I need to decrease the cognitive load on my customer understanding. You see what I'm doing? I'm coaching AI, but I'm coaching it with a framework in mind, with an end result in mind. Then you as a human being have to have the ability to say, that's it. That's the one. I know that's the one, and I'm going to use that one.

21:52But if you just go and ask it for an answer, it's going to give you the wrong answer. Yeah, well, I'm glad you said that because I think people that are trying to not use AI at all, I don't know who they are anymore, but that is ridiculous. I'm curious about that. Now AI is giving you these ideas. Maybe they're framing it all. And just along the same lines of coming up with that, making the person the hero, do you A, B test that line? Like kids love aquariums or is it, you know, kids enjoy fish. Like you come up with like five versions. You put them out there and you're looking for certain metrics to come back and then you roll with one or are you landing on one out of the gate?

22:23You're like, this is it. You want to test everything. Kids love aquariums. Didn't need to be tested. I knew that was gonna I knew that was gonna make them tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars and of course it will because you don't have to think about it I mean like kids love aquariums means parents who have kids are gonna they want something their kids love you don't have to think about this now what I'll often do is I'll take um I'll take four or five taglines or I've even done this with my entire book in rough draft copy and I've said pretend You're a book club with five different members, a left-leaning feminist liberal, a right-leaning conservative male, a schoolteacher, a fan of Donald Miller, and somebody who's never heard of me.

23:14They've just read this book. Give me their sound bites and tell me specifically what they won't like about this book. And they'll say, well, the feminist doesn't like this. I'll say, OK, feminist is important to me. how can I mitigate the damage to soften this for the feminist perspective or the male conservative or the guy who's never heard of Donald Miller? Show me lines that I can put in this book that would mitigate the cognitive load for them. And it'll give me those lines. And then I drop it back in. I say, OK, give me the same thing now that those lines are in and it'll give me better and better results.

23:47You want to do the same thing with taglines, with landing page copy, with lead generators, you know, and what it's going to do is it's going to say, especially if you give it the instruction of reduce the cognitive load, it's going to come back and go, here's the clear winner. And here's why. Now you take that and you test it in the market because AI isn't human. So we've got to now go test it with human beings to see where AI was off. But I think it's a fantastic focus group. You can create focus groups inside of AI, you can give it 10 different personalities inside of one focus group. And it's, it's just a fantastic tool.

24:21You're not using it. You ought to. I mean, I need to reduce cognitive load in my life. I'm going to recommend to my friends when they text me and my wife. Cause like I'm very simple minded human being. Well, you know, I do that too. And I say, look, unless I'm helping you clarify your message and coming up with your five sound bites, the answer is no. You know, so it's like you want me to come speak at something and I don't get to do that the answer is no so people just stop asking me unless it's about creating five soundbites they're gonna help you make money well before i ask you a bunch of email questions i would imagine sitting next to you in the movie theater when their previews are playing forget about the movie they always play 20 previews now and sitting next to you i can imagine you being like nope that movie's terrible they don't have a hero or they're not falling in a hole or like is is going to a movie next to donald miller a bizarre experience well it can be i mean my wife hates it when i elbow her and say that guy's going to die in 31 minutes because it's a uh you know a conquer the monster script and the conquer the monster script on page 17 has this in it and this is not going to be any different um however i will say this jay movies are so incredibly powerful and stories are so incredibly powerful to compel a human brain they suck me in just like they suck you in and i stopped studying them and i just enjoy them so there's no other tool on the planet that will cause a person to stop daydreaming people daydream 30 of the time when they're walking around there's no other tool in the planet that will stop you from daydreaming that's more powerful than a story wow that's awesome all right let's get into email for a second here because everybody here is trying to make you write the best subject line and now they open up the headline all the things and it was like great how do i get this all across like does your whole story brand formula framework and all this idea of making the person to hear all does that start like in the subject line and And then what happens after they open it?

26:11Like, how does it all work with email? Well, there are some formulas and best practices that work really well. Your subject line, you know, again, it's almost like taking chords on a guitar, which is a science. It's an actual science. This is the C flat chord. This is the B chord. This is the G chord. That's a science. Asking me where I put the G chord in a song is not science. That's art. And so once you learn the science, you can play with the art. So should the subject always be a B flat? No, it depends. Show me the subject. Is it working? I will say as best practice, if you say struggling with X question mark, it's going to be a great subject line.