Transcription
Every great story starts with the hero who's doing fine, but they immediately get into a hole. I always say never make yourself the hero in the story. So, whoever is giving you the money when they see your video, you want them to find themselves in the story.
What this means for you as a principal is you need to cast a vision for your customer's life. So, how do you make a sales video, a pitch video for your product, your service, your brand, and not make it feel like you're selling anything? Uh, make it feel like you are telling a story and also dramatically increase sales. That's a lot, right?
Well, I saw a video recently that I think is a master class on how to actually do it. This is a video for Gary Brea. He has a company called the Ultimate Human. His client is Dana White. Now, this is his most high-profile client. He's probably seen the biggest transformation with this client. A lot of companies do this, right? They'll interview the client and they'll show some one-minute video, two-minute video of the client telling their story, but it's not riveting. It's not exciting. It's none of that. Uh, it's boring. In fact, this is not boring. This is interesting. All right. How do you actually take a sales pitch and make it feel like you're telling a story? This is how you do it.
>> Gary said, "Give me 13 weeks and I'll change your life." Nobody could fix anything that was wrong with me. I probably was going to die within years.
>> A lot of what we did was not fancy multi-million dollar equipment. A lot of it was keto reset diet. Getting into a routine, dietary and lifestyle changes.
>> It didn't take 13 weeks. It took six. And it started to feel so good that you become addicted to feeling that good.
>> And look at this guy. All right, stop. We're going to stop right there. We are 22 seconds in and the audience is pretty riveted. This is one of those, if this was an ad on YouTube, it's one of those ads that if you're the right demographic and certainly if you're a Dana White fan or UFC fan, you're probably not going to pause it. Your your finger is right there on the button, but it's riveting. The music is exciting. This guy is trying to figure something out. This guy is seeing incredible results. All that kind of stuff.
All right, let's break it down. The first thing that you've got to do in a video like this is really quickly you've got to put the hero in a hole. Every great story starts usually with a hero who's doing fine, but they immediately get into a hole, right? They lose their job. They find out there's a bomb that's going off. Somebody tries to kill them. Uh, their girlfriend leaves them. That's a story. The story is just here's a hero with a stable life and we're going to put him down in a hole. So, let's watch how they do this. They're going to put the hero in a hole within seconds.
>> Gary said, "Give me 13 weeks and I'll change your life." Nobody could fix anything that was wrong with me.
Stop. That's it. "Give me 13 weeks and I can fix your life. Nobody could fix anything that was wrong with me." We immediately, first, you put a deadline on it. Can Can Gary get this done in 13 weeks? And all of a sudden, this hero is in a hole and nobody could ever fix it. So, he's hopeless. Nothing has ever worked. We are 4 seconds in, right? Most businesses, it's 60 seconds before they even get here. We are 4 seconds in. There's music. It's really exciting.
Now, now that the hero is in a hole, if we really want to make the story interesting, what we need to do is make the situation worse. It is not time to get the hero out of the hole. We want to increase the stakes. We want to increase the urgency. Want to increase the drama. So, what we're going to do is we're going to take this hero in a hole and we're going to throw a tire into the hole with them. Watch.
>> I probably was going to die within years.
Stop. Two more seconds. "I believed I was going to die within years." The stakes are as high as they can possibly be. This is why so many movies are about life and death situations. And even if it's like a romantic comedy, I feel like I'm going to die without her. It's got to be that life or death drama, right? And the beautiful thing about this is Dana actually says it. "I believed I was going to die within a few years." We are 7 seconds into this video. We know that there's some guy named Gary who can fix them. We know that this guy, there's nothing else that has ever worked for him. And he know we know he feels like he's going to die. That's the beginning of a story. Now the story question is how is this hero going to get out of the hole? Let's find out.
>> A lot of what we did was not fancy multi-million dollar equipment. A lot of it was keto reset diet getting in.
Okay, stop. "What we did was..." Now we intuitively know we can foreshadow that somehow the hero got out of the hole. Now this is what's fascinating. Gary needs to position his product as the solution that will get the hero out of the hole. But he doesn't do that right away. He does something even better. What he does is he says it's not what you think it was. It's not uh what you have already tried. It is different. This is important for your customer because your customer has already tried a bunch of things and they think this is the same thing. So when you say it's not, they automatically go, "It's not anything I've tried yet. This is different." That's really, really fantastic messaging on Gary Breakfast's part. It's not this. "What we did was actually very simple. Getting into a routine. Dietary and lifestyle changes."
>> It didn't take 13 weeks. It took six.
Stop. "Dietary and lifestyle changes. We got him into a routine." What this is in story story narrative form is it's called the plan, right? You have a hero in a hole and then there is a plan to get the hero out of the hole. So they position the plan as the the thing, the solution to get the hero out of the hole. Now Dana White comes back and says, "It didn't take 13 weeks, it took six. It started to feel so good that you become addicted to feeling that good."
All right. Now, he's he's gone all the way to where he's out of the hole, right? He's out of the hole. He's never felt this good. He's looking great. It didn't take 13 weeks. It took 6 weeks. This is an entire story. It's a short story in 21 seconds. All right, let's go back. It starts with the hero in a hole and the hero is in a desperate situation. Then the hole is even worse because he's going to die. And then there is a plan that's not what you think it is. It's not what you've tried. It's something very different that got him out of the hole faster than they anticipated so that his results are even better than they've ever been anticipated. This is a story hook in 21 seconds that gets you interested in the whole rest of it. It's almost like it's foreshadowing the story that could happen to you, the customer. You could be Dana White. If you feel like you're in a hole, if you feel like you're going to die, if you've tried everything, you need to try my ex. Now, let's see where we go from here because they've already kind of told the story or at least they foreshadowed the story. I'm hooked. Tell me more. And that's where you want to get within 20 seconds. You want to say, "Tell me more. I like the story. I'm interested."
>> He's like TKO. He started Slap. He just signed his deal with Paramount, which is all over the news right now.
>> Streaming is...
Stop. What Gary is saying is, "My client is a badass. My client is awesome." Notice what he's not saying. Gary is not saying, "I am a badass. Look how awesome I am. I get people out of holes. I save people's lives. It's all about me. My supplements are amazing." He knows not to do that. He knows to say, "This story is not about me. This story is about my customer." I always say, "Never make yourself the hero in the story. Always make your customer the hero in the story. You want to be the guide."
What does that actually mean? Well, in story, there are two major characters. The hero and the guide. There are other characters, but the hero and the guide are two of the major characters. The hero is the one who is trying to get out of the hole. The guide is the one who knows how to get them out of the hole. You always want to position yourself as the guide in the story. The one who is an expert at getting people out of the hole. That's why you don't want to talk about the fact that your grandfather started the company or you've been around for 75 years. Your customer doesn't care about that. What you really want to say is, "We think our customers are awesome, but they're suffering. They're suffering and we don't want them to suffer anymore. Look at these awesome people who are suffering. They deserve better." See how it's all about the customer and their story. They are modeling this right now. He's also giving Dana White a chance to brag about his own success and who he is.
>> On the rise. So, these streaming services are realizing they all need live sports. Everything that I'm doing in my life and in my business, literally none of this would be happening had I not finally connected with you 3 years ago.
That's amazing. So he's saying, "All of my success and the fact that I'm a badass, all of that is because of you. None of it would have happened without you." So notice the hero is now out of the hole and they're turning around. They're shaking hands with the guide saying, "Thank you for getting me out of this hole." We are 40 seconds in. This is a master class in not telling your company story, but inviting your customer into a story. Here's what I mean. If you tell your story, it is, you know, "My grandfather started a company. It's been around for a long time. We have created the best pool cleaning services in all of Topeka, Kansas. Uh, my wife works with me. I'm the father of whatever." People are going, "I I don't understand, right? I It's like, that's great. Fantastic. Sounds like you're bragging about yourself."
But when I'm watching this video, I see myself as Dana White. I don't see myself as Gary Brea. I'm not I don't have a vitamin supplement company. I'm Dana White. So, whoever is giving you the money when they see your video, you want them to find themselves in the story. And what you want to do is you want them find themselves in a similar pain. So, you need to find out what the pain is of your customer and have your customer on camera, in text, however you're telling the story, had your customer say, "I was in so much pain because of this." And not only that, the pain was actually worse. "I felt like I was going to die. It was awful." Your equivalent of "I felt like I was going to die" might have been, "I tried a bunch of roofers and everybody wanted to overcharge me. Everybody was adding $10,000 onto the bid. It was killing me." So that kind of "it was killing me" is the line that you're actually looking for. And then you come in and you say, "Well, here's how we fixed their roof. Here's how we started cleaning their pool. Here's how we took care of their uh laundry service. Here's how we actually got them the software they needed to succeed. Here, you know, here's what we did." And then they come back and they say, "I have been so ridiculously successful and so ridiculously happy. It's all because of these guys." All of that in 40 seconds. You add a little music, some subtitles, and it is fantastic. Let's see where it goes from here.
>> This deal that you just did. I mean, the fact that it's going to be so impactful. I think about where you were when we started and where you are.
You hear this? "I think about the hole that you were in when we started and then I think about where you are now. And I'm amazed by your journey." This is called guide affirming the hero. The guide actually steps back in at the end of the story and says, "You are awesome. You have transformed. You are different. You used to be a person with a problem. Now you're not a person with a problem. I honor you. I praise you. I adore you. This is amazing that you have accomplished this." Notice Gary is talking all about the customer, not about himself. He hasn't even said his name yet. It's amazing.
>> You are now to say once you feel this good, you never ever want to go back.
All right, but what's he saying there? He's not talking to Dana White anymore. He's talking to you. He's talking to the viewer. He's saying, "You are going to feel so good. You're never going to want to go back." Those are the results, right? The results of this, the the the climactic scene that I want to foreshadow for you is you are never going to want to go back. You're going to feel better than you've felt in your entire life. And that's kind of how his story ends, right? It's it we head toward the climactic scene. What this means for you as a principal is you need to cast a vision for your customer's life. If you buy my product, this is what the future looks like. And that's an important part of the story. This is where we need to go. Let's see where they go next.
>> For all you people that think it's a croc of and all you guys in the industry and and you're out there criticizing...
Bam. That was basically the call to action. The call to action was, "You need to move on this." And for this particular video, it's, "You need to watch the rest of this thing, right? I want you to plug in. Stop criticizing." And by the way, gets a lot of criticism because people think it's snake oil and Dana White saying it's not snake oil. Uh, and you have the customer telling the camera, "You got to take this seriously. You got to buy it." Now, they get into, you know, what the system actually is. You've earned the right. This video is 23 more minutes long. There's an interview. It's all that kind of stuff. But the hook at the beginning was a master sales pitch that disguised itself as a story. A story about who? A story about the customer.
All right, let me summarize this into a formula that you can use. And again, in just 40 seconds, you can create a really incredible video. Start with a hero in a hole. Your hero has a problem. Whatever that problem is, whatever the problem is that you solve, you want to start with that. And it's your hero customer in a hole. Agitate the problem. Once they're in a hole, saying, "Man, I felt miserable. It was awful. In fact, I felt like I was going to die." Throw a tiger into the hole. This creates a sense of urgency. It people kind of lean in when they're watching the video. I want to know more. They they feel a little stressed because the music is making feel stressed. I mean, we've got them hooked at this point. Next, once you've got them hooked, position your product as the solution to the problem. This solution gets you out of the hole. Our customers get out of the hole when they buy this. Next, paint a before and after picture. You know, "When I first met you, you were in a terrible shape. Now, you're in awesome shape. You feel better than ever." You can do this many ways. The customer can say, "I feel better than I've ever felt before." Or, "My pool is cleaner. I never have to worry about it." Or, "I don't have a leaky roof." Whatever it is that you sell, paint a before. Before and after, not just the after picture, before and after picture. Next, call the customer to action. Actually ask them to buy the product. And here's how you do here's how you ask them to buy the product. "If you are struggling with X, you should buy Y." Never actually just say, "You should buy Y." "If you are struggling with X, you should buy Y. If you are in a hole, you should buy this ladder to get you out of the hole." Next, paint a picture of a climactic scene. "Here's what life should look like for you. You shouldn't have to worry about cleaning your pool. You shouldn't have to worry about lawn maintenance. You shouldn't have to worry about your dog barking at the door all the time. You shouldn't have to worry about your software systems talking to each other. You shouldn't have to worry about this. Uh, and your life should actually look like this. Your software should be seamless and integrated. You shouldn't even notice it. You should actually walk out to your pool at any point. It should be clean and and sparkling and wonderful and refreshing to jump in. You shouldn't have a leaky roof. You shouldn't even think about your roof for the next 30 years. You should have a great roof at a great price." Paint a picture of the climactic scene. And then you're going to do the last thing. You're going to repeat the call to action again. "If you are struggling with X, if you are worried about X, if X is a problem that you have, you should buy Y. Call me today." And you actually tell them where to go to buy that product. And you actually say, "Buy the product. You don't have to struggle with this any longer."
You put that formula into a video. You make it move pretty quickly. You pick the right clips so that your customer is saying it and you're not having to say it. Stick a little music on, put some subtitles, and you have effectively created a sales pitch that feels like a story.
If you want help creating a sales pitch that feels more like a story, my name is Donald Miller. I wrote a book called Building a Story Brand 2.0. That book has sold over 1.4 million copies to business owners just like you because it has in it the formulas that create sensational collateral just like this. If you want somebody to actually create the collateral for you and strategize with you an entire marketing and messaging system, especially in the age of AI, go to marketingmadeimple.com because I have certified hundreds of very, very good marketers to create collateral just like this for you. So go to marketingmadeimple.com and hire one of my Story Brand certified guides today and your marketing can start feeling much more like storytelling.