2368 -Avoiding Design Disasters in Product Development with Deeney Enterprises' Dianna Deeney

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0:46Visit podverify.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. with us right now it's my good friend amanda johnson amanda you are the story oracle that's your official title and you are found on the web at saved by story dot house uh by the way to our friend that's listening go look at amanda's website it's very your word amanda i i absolutely agree it's enchanting again that website is saved by story dot house amanda thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to talk story. Yeah. So as we get going here, before we do talk about your work, I always love learning what leaders are doing for fun when they're not at work.

1:34What have you been into lately? Well, you know, my work is everywhere, right? Because we see the world through story. So my absolute favorite thing to do and what I can be caught doing late into the morning hours is being hooked on whatever is the most recent series that I'm stuck on. Right now, it's a time traveling one. And I am that wife that's like, just one more episode, babe, just one more, you know. Oh, so the TV show, The Time Traveler's Wife. Yeah. Yeah. Where is that streaming? Well, The Time Traveler's Wife is a movie. The Hallmark series is called The Way Home. And it's interesting.

2:17It's got me going. I'm going to actually use it for our next campfire. Oh, my gosh. I love it. I love it. Well, Amanda, your website is savedbystory.house. And share with us what you do professionally. I help people with their messages. So individuals, storytellers, creatives, experts who are looking to establish themselves as authors, you know, experts looking to create some authority, deliver their solution in written format, cultivate an audience through storytelling and their expertise. I help them from Inspiration Impact. What's the idea? Where are you stuck? How do we get you unstuck? And all the way through publishing and launch of the book.

3:03All right. So who, what types of folks are you working with and who would really value from, from your insights? Well, my favorite people to work with are the high performing, overachieving entrepreneurial types. You know, they've got, usually they've come out of a system that they knew that they could fix, but not from the inside. So they've developed a whole bunch of strategies and solutions. They have a really great story to tell. And so my work is to help them alchemize all of that into a really, really powerful book that's transformational in and of itself, and then can be used to change the system that they came from.

3:45Yeah. Well, would you mind giving us just a little bit of a workshop right now, maybe high level of ways that we could start thinking about our story and how, and as we do that too, maybe actually before we get into that, Why is this so critical to do if we're just thinking about what we communicate on social media, on our website, in our emails, everything that we're saying to our audience? Why is it so critical to weave in story? And then part two we'll get into afterwards, and we'll talk about the elements of that. Yeah. Well, story and narrative are our core operating system. It's the way that we all see the world.

4:25So those of us who are creating solutions, we create solutions through our stories. Those of us who are looking for solutions are looking for solutions for our stories. So the narrative impulse is so deep, so wired into us that if you leave it out of what you're delivering to the world, it just feels wrong, right? It just feels like a bunch of data that has no context or meaning. So that's why we need stories. That's why we need them in all of our messaging platforms and certainly, especially inside of our books. Well, and I think this is so, so sought after, especially today when we're living in an era where AI can just crank out slop and oftentimes, you know, is missing a soul.

5:12It's missing a heartbeat. Yeah, it's good marketing copy. It's effective. It's factual. But it lacks a depth of humanity that I think that all of us can feel. At some level, we can feel that, yeah, these are just the facts, ma 'am. But this doesn't feel like it was written by a human who is sharing their vulnerability and their personal nuances and their personal experiences. And, you know, that sort of thing may or may not, you know, really get carried over when someone leans too heavily on AI tools. I'm sure you have some thoughts on this. I have many thoughts on this. I figured you would. Many thoughts.

5:59You know, a good portion of the work that I've been doing for the last 20 years with people is not just on organization and narrative structure and storytelling. All of those things are really important to communicate a message really powerfully, but equally important sort of because of where I found my footing in this industry. I was surrounded by a lot of really smart, really powerful, just dynamic, charismatic humans who had these brilliant messages and they were like divine channels. You know, they stand on stages and transformation happens, right? But running in a bunch of these different circles, I saw a whole bunch of what was happening behind the curtain.

6:43And I started to see that they weren't, there were parts of their lives where they weren't embodying their own message. And that, I believe, is sort of at the crux of the real, how do I say it? it's a it's a conflict that we have to wrestle with with with ai because ai can do a lot of the thinking for us and the wrestling for us we can give it a lot of inputs and we can personalize it right i've been playing with it this week and it's just blowing my mind how it can get so close to my voice because it's got all of my books now and all those things and yet you're right it's missing that that essential piece right there's something that just feels just a little off And I think it's because when we are writing, whether that's typing, but especially when it's hand to paper, we are not just putting a whole bunch of our ideas into the world.

7:44We are actually wrestling with them as they come out because they get out of us. And then we look at them and go, do I really believe that? I'm not sure I believe that. That idea doesn't hold up against this idea that comes in the next chapter. How do I write? There's all of this work that goes into wrestling with our ideas and our stories. And so there's a transformation that's possible for people when they do it themselves. You know, they don't hire a ghostwriter. They don't let AI do it. There's a real depth of embodiment opportunity that I'm I'm curious to see what happens in our industry as a result of AI.

8:22I actually, playing with it, as much as I have been this last week, I'm wondering if it's going to expose a lot of individuals who aren't wanting to do the work. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. No question about it. And again, I think as humans, you know, I would probably consider myself to be a little bit higher and kind of on the empath matrix. And, you know, when I'm looking for connection with someone and I either get what feels like maybe not the honest experience from someone, like if I feel like they're kind of putting on a show or, again, it's like if I'm engaging with them and I get something that's clearly just kind of fake and AI written.

9:06Amanda, I feel ripped off because I think we all at some level crave human connection. And you're right. These tools are very powerful. You know, and AI is a tool just like, you know, any other tool that can make our job work better. But there are just some things that, as you mentioned, I don't think are very effective to outsource, you know, to certainly that human oversight to make sure it's in our voice. Do you want to share maybe just one more thought about, you know, kind of that human connection and empathy and just being honest with your audience at all times kind of thing? And then we'll get done beating that horse to death and move on.

9:46Talk about your work. It's an important horse. No, you know, some of the most successful clients that I've seen are the ones who are, they move through the world with big, big minds. You know, they're highly intellectual, but they've also got the big hearts and the woo. And a lot of the work has been to figure out the balance of this, right? in the content. Because when you have this idea of like, I'm gonna be an authority in this space, that's usually sort of mind-driven, right? Like I'm going to show people how good my ideas are and how powerful my solution is. And yet if you have that, but you don't connect with the human who is at the beginning of the journey, feeling lost, confused, angry, betrayed, hurt, then it doesn't matter how good your solution is.

10:40They haven't bought into it. They can't connect with you. And the people who have gotten the most out of this process are the people who, you know, I mean, they didn't do it very happily at first. You know, I really don't want to tell that story, Amanda. Well, let's just write it and see how it goes, right? I'm not making you commit to putting this in the book, but just write it and see what happens. And then let's test it with the audience. and every single one of them, what has happened to their embodiment of their message and to their careers as a result of saying, okay, I get it. My story is the way to connect.

11:21It is the way to let people know I have been exactly where you're at. And I know you can trust me. I can show you the step-by-step journey I took to get where I am today. It might not be the same exact steps that you have to take, but it's at least a narrative blueprint that will put you in the right direction. And here's the thing about story. When it's written well, when it's told well, there's actually a physical transformation happening in the reader or the watcher, right? That's all those chemical cocktails. You're in the conflict with the person. You're wondering, you're trying to get them.

11:59I mean, have you ever yelled at the television? Just like, don't jump into that pond. Don't do that again. That's part of our transformative opportunity as individuals witnessing story all the time. But most of us are just blindly consuming it or we're using it because it's a trend. And it's the way that everyone tells us to connect with our audience instead of sort of finding that middle ground where it's for us and for them. Mm-hmm. Amanda, when you're working with your clients, what does that look like? How do you engage with them? When they're coming from inspiration, I have a retreat model because I found that it's really, really difficult to get really busy people to carve out time for something like this, right?

12:49They have so many different obligations, personal, professional. And so I realized very early I needed to kidnap them with consent. So we have a retreat model where four times a year we're away for seven days. And we do a little bit of stories. We call it story saving work. What's got you? What's keeping you from moving forward on this? And then the last few days are all about actually getting the work done. And then we have regular co-working sessions, three-day retreats virtually every month. It's a lot of partnership and accountability because what I know being a high performer and working with so many of them is that really all you need to do is get to the point where you realize like, oh, I don't have to do this perfectly.

13:34I can do this badly and have this person take what I've done and make it great and then feed it back to me. And there's this refinement partnership that begins to happen. And as soon as a high performer wraps their head around that process, it's like, it's guns a blazing. I mean, they're just like hauling butt through the process because they, that kicks in like, oh, I get it. This is the expertise. This is the part I need to do. And you can help me figure out how to make it that much more powerful than by, you know, halfway through the project, their writing is improved. Their messaging is improved.

14:11Their storytelling is starting to, you know, get better everywhere, not just on the page, but from stages and in their personal lives. Yeah. I'm certain in your time in doing this that you've probably seen some transformations happen that then turn into like legit business. So like there is a return on investment from this work. And any particular stories come to mind or anyone that you can think of that might be a good example of that? well um I have a few like I I had this one woman that I was working with um who at the beginning this again she's one of these like extremely smart Ivy League trained women um but also when her life fell apart she found a lot of her answers outside of science and in the world of or spirituality and so being an academic and being in the woo how do I do this how do I talk to the academic audience without freaking them out and feeling completely discredited.

15:11And so a lot of the work that we did together was using the storytelling to connect to the pain points and then using the science to establish what was happening. And so it was really amazing to watch her career take off because she sort of through a series of funny little synchronistic events that happen a lot when people are writing and in the creative process, she got moved toward an audience that she didn't expect that gave her wild amounts of impact. She's now, you know, part of a foundation at a global level of transformation that, you know, I think back 10 years ago when we got started and that was just like not even on her radar.

15:53And now her work is global. It's everywhere. And it was just about, you know, figuring out how to use the story in order to connect and then how to bring in the solution, all the science and speak to the audience powerfully. Amanda, your website is, for our friends that are listening, savedbystory.house. Someone's been listening to our conversation. Where do they go from here? How do they engage with you? How do they follow you? I don't know if you have any resources that you want to share. Yeah, you can find us at Saved by Story on all of the platforms. if you go to savebystory.house hit forward slash foreshadows and there are a bunch of free downloads there video content you know all kinds of worksheets and different things that are sort of there to help people at every stage because like I said we work from inspiration impact so we have individuals come with I have this idea I have no idea how to execute this or look here's a manuscript that I've been working on for five years I don't even know if it's good enough?

16:59What do I do with this? What does the publishing process look like? So we do a lot of education and empowerment along the journey to help people get in the driver's seat of their careers in thought leadership. You're also on Substack. You have a podcast. Is there anything else that you want to share, gifts or resources or whatever that folks might want to grab or where to connect with you? I'd say go to savedbystory.house and book some time. We love talking to individuals who have great ideas, great stories, great solutions, and seeing if it's a good fit. And we have a lot of referral partners that we've referred to if we're not.

17:37So that's great. Amanda Johnson, the Story Oracle, your website is savedbystory.house. Amanda, thank you for joining us. Thank you.

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