Transcription
What most businesses are missing in terms of a messaging strategy, they're missing sound bites that are repeatable. Everybody has them memorized, and it gets people curious about your business. When you look at billion-dollar brands, this is what they have figured out. It's just to make people stop in their tracks and say, "That sounds like something I need. Can you tell me more?"
If you can't make $200,000 off those five sound bites, I would be shocked. You're listening to the Story Brand podcast, based on Donald Miller's best-selling book, Building a Story Brand.
The Story Brand framework is made up of seven key elements, all of them anchored in one powerful idea: Your customer is the hero, and you are their guide. Each week on the podcast, you'll get exactly what you need to craft clear messaging that connects with more customers and grows your business. Now, let's dive in with your hosts, Donald Miller and Kyle Reed.
Today, we're here to talk about the five essential sound bites all businesses should have.
"That's amazing because I have five."
"That's incredible. It's like we set that up."
"I don't know how we did that, but we did it."
"That's called a transition, folks."
"Here's what I want to ask you. What does a company need when it comes to messaging campaigns?"
"Like the bare essence is really what we're talking about."
"Like, let's talk about messaging. Messaging, marketing, you know, you combine those together. There's something that all companies need to find success. What is it?"
"Yeah. And I've figured this out recently."
"Okay."
"Because I worked with a company called NextA, a software company, and a company called WAB. And then even talked to Airbnb.org the other day about this, but..."
"I think it boils down to five sound bites."
"Okay."
"And I think every company needs five sound bites to grow their business."
"Now, you've talked about this before. You mentioned survival sound bites. Would that be..."
"These are the survival. These are the survival ones. Okay, just want to make sure that was right on that."
"The, if people remember correctly, your business metaphorically works like a house."
"Mhm."
"And a house has three parts."
"As far as my metaphor goes, the the five front steps or front steps, yeah,"
"that lead to a front porch that lead to a front door."
"And the front steps obviously get you to the front porch. And the front porch gets you to the front door. And if you look at my house here in Nashville, it's got it happens to have five front steps."
"I think all great houses do."
"They must. It has like a big front porch and then there's a front door. Um, if you were to, let's say, everybody in the neighborhood is trick-or-treating."
"Mhm."
"And you remove the five front steps from my house. So, it's just an 8ft..."
"[laughter] you know, what, however much an 8ft climb"
"uh with no ladder, no nothing to the front porch."
"That does not seem very inviting. Uh, you're not going to get as many trick-or-treaters. Uh, maybe that's what people want. I don't know."
"But I think what most businesses are missing in terms of a messaging strategy,"
"they're missing the five front steps. They're missing front steps, period. They're missing sound bites that are repeatable. Everybody has them memorized. You say them over and over, and it gets people curious about your business. That's what the job of the front steps is. The job of the front steps are not to explain the nuance of what it is that you do. So, let me explain these five sound bites that I'm going to share with you today. And you're going to you're going to be able to understand what they are by the end of this podcast. The job is not to present the truth about what your business is,"
"okay?"
"It's to pique people's curiosity so that they can find out the truth. Your job is not to enlighten people about how your product works. Your job, none of that. It's just to make people stop in their tracks and say, 'That sounds like something I need. Can you tell me more?'"
"And if somebody says, 'That sounds like something I need. Can you tell me more?' They are on the front porch at that point."
"And then you show them a webinar, you show them a keynote presentation, you hand them a proposal, you hand them a pitch deck, you hand them uh a lead generator, you hand them a white paper, you send them to a YouTube video. That's where you enlighten them and you begin to build trust so that you can say, 'Would you like to come inside the house?' And they say, 'Absolutely. I've been actually looking forward to Yeah. Solving this problem.' And the the the solution is on the other side of the paywall. And the paywall is that front door."
"Yeah."
"Most businesses do not have front steps at all. I mean, at all. So, the idea is like you've got to pique people's curiosity. So, let me tell you what the sound bites are and then we can discuss them. Uh, and I'll give you an example through WEAB and even Nexiva, this other this other software company of what we came up with for them. But the very first uh soundbite is is it spells peace. P E A C is the acronym. It's how you can remember it."
"The first sound bite is problem."
"The next sound bite is empathy."
"Okay."
"The next sound bite is answer."
"Here we go."
"So your the answer to the problem is what? The next sound bite is C for change. And then the final sound bite is end result. So it's problem, empathy, answer, change, and result."
"Okay? And this is all in the curiosity."
"It's all those are the front steps. You are not enlightening people. So here are the rules of the peace sound bites. Okay?"
"You can't be nuanced."
"Do not be nuanced. This is black and white thinking."
"Uh I can't have I I can't be confused about anything that you're talking about. Um, I need to be able to understand it without burning any mental calories. The brain when it has to think burns calories, and none of your steps should cause you to burn any calories. These should be very easy steps to walk up. Uh, they should invite customers into a story. These five sound bites should invite a customer into a story in which they use your product to solve their problem."
"Uh, they should position you as a guide."
"Uh, we all know from Story Brand, never play the hero, always play the guide. So quite a tall order for five short sound bites."
"Don't be nuanced. Be short. Be memorable. Uh, invite customers into a story. You know, they've got to accomplish some tough things. So let's go through the P. The is the problem that you solve. So your first sound bite needs to be related to the problem that you solve. For example, uh, with You Need a Budget, it was, 'Have you ever worried about money?' That's it."
"Yep."
"'Have you ever worried about money?' is a critical sound bite to grow the You Need a Budget platform."
"And they solved that problem."
"Yeah. That's the problem. But let's go with let's go with like why we chose that soundbite."
"Uh, we could have said 'worried about money'."
"But what if you're not?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Okay. If you're not, then you've we've just disqualified that customer. So, we actually say, 'Have you ever?' And how many people have ever worried about money at some point in their life?"
"100%."
"100%."
"Yep."
"So, we basically just got 100% of the market to pay attention. Now, if you are actively worried about money, bam, I mean, you're like 10 times more likely to stop in your tracks. Most people when you say, 'What do you do?' They say, 'I'm the CEO of whatever,' or 'I'm the marketing director at whatever.' 'I'm the media director in your case at Story Brand.' Um, I just talked to a group of gym owners two nights ago here in Nashville, and I said, if you know like 200 gym owners in the room. I said, 'Look, if somebody asks what you do, it is an enormous mistake to say, "I own a gym."'"
"Mhm."
"Because they're going to change the subject,"
"right? Or they're going to wonder like, 'How'd you get into that?' Or you're not going to pique their curiosity about doing business with you. Now, everybody needs a gym. Every human being could use a gym and could use a trainer, but if you say, 'I own a gym,' you're not going to do any business. What you need to say is something like, 'Um, I help men in their 50s add 10 years to their life.'"
"Yep."
"'I own a gym.'"
"Yep."
"That's You need to start with a hook. And a hook is always always a problem. So, I'm 54. If you said to me, 'I help men in their 50s add 10 years to their life.' I've got a four-year-old daughter. You think I'm paying attention? I'm I'm But if you said, 'I own a gym,' I go, 'I got a gym in my garage.'"
"Yeah."
"But you know what the gym in my garage does not do? Add 10 years to my life if I'm in my 50s."
"So, you know, and let's say you're talking to a high school tennis player. You say, uh, 'I help scrawny little tennis players like you develop the best serve in the game.'"
"Yeah. So, it can be adaptable to some degree is what..."
"It is. It is. It is adaptable. You want one for your entire gym."
"Yeah."
"Like if I if you just said, um, 'A lot of people hate gyms. They can't stand them because they're intimidated. I have a gym that's not intimidating.'"
"Yeah."
"You just increase the value of that gym because that gym solves a problem, a tangible problem."
"But I like that because you can talk to anybody. You know, even if you're, let's say you're talking to a couple and you could say, 'I I help give parents more energy to play with their kids.'"
"There you go. You know, you can just move it down the road as long as you start with that that [snorts] idea of the problem you solve."
"That's correct. Yeah."
"But the the main idea is you need to start with a problem. Now, you can do this for your overall brand and you can do it for every single product, but you want to start with your brand."
"So, for for You Need a Budget, for YAB, it was 'Have you ever worried about money?'"
"And the second sound bite, the problem soundbite P for peace is E."
"So E is empathy. Mhm. 'We know how you feel.'"
"That's it."
"'It's just if you've ever worried about money, we know how you feel.'"
"And that empathetic statement creates a bond with the customer. At that point, the empathetic statement says, 'Now, now let me tell you how this is working. The story starts out, these five sound bites, they start out by describing a hero down in a hole. Every movie is about a hero in a hole who has to get out of the hole. That's what every movie is about. Every story is about Harry Potter, whatever. It's a hero in a hole metaphorically, and they have to get out of the hole. So when I say, 'If you're ever worried about money,' I just described a hero in a hole. If you are worried about money, then you identify as the hero in a hole. Now a guide comes along, a character in the film that is designed and there to help the hero get out of the hole. Looks over the hole and says, 'I'm so sorry you're in that hole.'"
"Right. Now you have somebody who cares."
"'And you're just going, 'Wow, everybody's been ignoring me. Like and this person actually says, "We know how you feel." They understand my pain.' Remember Bill Clinton? 'I feel your pain.'"
"Empathy is a huge..."
"'I feel your pain' is something Bill Clinton said in a debate with uh George HW Bush and Ross Perot. And I still remember it."
"What is this 30 years later? Something like that. Yeah. 30 years later. More than 30 years later. I still remember it."
"Uh, so these are memorable sound bites. So when we say, 'We know how you feel,' uh, you are leaning over the hole saying, 'I'm so sorry that you were in that hole.' Now, if somebody cares about me, they are willing to help me. So as soon as you make that empathetic statement,"
"somebody else goes, 'I'm in pain and that person gives a a rat's butt and now I'm connected to them.' So that empathetic statement is very important. So this that empa empathetic statement positions you as the guide."
"Yeah. So that statement is necessary. Now notice that each of these first two sound bites, they work together. 'Have you ever worried about money? We know how you feel.' Right? I'm telling a story here, but they also work separately. So I can run a meta ad that just says, 'Have you ever worried about money?' question mark. And somebody might click on it."
"We know how you feel. Needs to be qualified. Yeah."
"But 'we know how it feels to worry about money.' Yes. Is really, really great. That was one of the questions I was going to ask is as I'm thinking about the stair metaphor and even the peace side of it,"
"can these interchange? Can you lead with the third step in some marketing?"
"Well, you can you can you can take them separately."
"Um, for instance, like one of the things that their social media team did was 'Taylor Taylor Swift just got a $50,000 ring. Uh, and you're worried about whether or not you can pay your rent on your apartment. We know how you feel.'"
"Yeah."
"Right. They can You want to get these statements into all sorts of other stuff that gets attention."
"Yeah. Okay."
"Um,"
"which is part of the curiosity, right?"
"Yeah. That's that's what's peeking people's curiosity."
"So then that's E. A is the answer."
"Okay."
"And the answer is your product. It's where you place your product in these sound bites on that step. That third step is your product step. It's the answer to the problem. So you want to position your product as the solution to the problem. And what it really is metaphorically is it's the guide looking over the into the hole."
"Mh."
"And the guide says, 'Hey, I know how it feels to be in that hole.' And then they say, 'Download the WAB app.'"
"And that's the soundbite,"
"right? 'Have you ever worried about money? We know how you feel. Download the WAB app.' That's the third sound bite. That's the that's literally the the guide throwing a rope into the hole."
"Yeah."
"So, you see how the story is unfolding"
"in just really short, simple sound bites."
"So, now there's a rope going down and this person has a way of climbing out."
"And the rope is a product that they buy."
"Yes. And it's like, 'I got something you can buy.' And you know, you throw the rope down and they start climbing up out of the hole."
"And it it seems like as the as the metaphor keeps building out and the framework keeps building out, if you help them climb out of a hole, but you stopped there, that would be a mistake."
"That would be a mistake."
"You need to give them now something."
"But there's an even more important point than that, and that is K. If I if I if I showed up today and I gave you a 20ft rope and I said, 'Hey, this has been in my garage. I I haven't used it in two years. It's 20 ft long. It's really really strong.'"
"And I just thought, you know, Kyle, I don't know. Do you have a rope? Here's a rope."
"Would you What would you I mean, just literally, what would you think of that?"
"I would just go, 'Thanks.' Like, okay. And then it would go in my garage and I'd never touch it."
"You would put Yeah. And then you probably two years give it away to somebody else."
"Yeah. Give it to another guy."
"Okay. Most most people when you tell them about your product, that's how people feel about it. They're like, 'What am I going to do with this?'"
"Yeah."
"Now, if you're in a hole,"
"Mhm."
"and I throw down one end, by the way, of a 20ft rope. Yeah."
"That's very strong."
"Is that rope perceived as more valuable to you or less valuable than if you weren't in a hole?"
"Yeah. Very."
"Yes."
"So, it's very very important those that first sound bit is important to let the the customer recognize they're in a hole. The reason is the product is suddenly extremely valuable. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense if they don't realize the value of it. That's right. If you don't start with the problem, you'll never realize."
"That's why you don't want to say, 'I own a gym.'"
"Yeah."
"That's like, 'Here's a rope.'"
"Yeah."
"But if you actually say, 'I work with guys in their 50s who want to live 10 years longer, but can't figure out how.'"
"Yep."
"'I own a gym.' You see what I'm saying?"
"Yep."
"Now, if you want to take that even further, 'I work with men in their 50s to live an average of 10 years longer. I care about these men because I watched my dad get way too old before his time and he just wasn't able to communicate with me.'"
"Yeah."
"Therefore, I started a cohort at my gym of men in their 50s. It's called '10 Years Longer.'"
"Yeah."
"You see you see how much more valuable my product is now that I I placed it as the as the rope going into a hole."
"And so many businesses also can skip the side though where they lead with 'I saw my dad get older and he wasn't available.'"
"Don't skip that part."
"But but they put it first before the problem."
"Yes. Right. So it doesn't become relevant because..."
"No, they got to go in order."
"They lead with that. Yeah. If you don't start with the problem first, then the the story, the personal side of it doesn't matter."
"Now, what's happening as we write these? There were a lot of things happening with the WAB team. There were about 15 of them who came here to Nashville."
"Um, as you start writing these, by the way, it sounds like this is easy. This was the end of like six hours."
"Yeah."
"Because we we went we were all over the place. They didn't want to use the word budget. They didn't want to, you know, they they wanted to talk more about spending than restrictive budgeting, things like that. And I'm like, okay, you know, there were a bunch of rules that we had to follow to get into this."
"And um, but we came up with there, look, there's a controlling idea here."
"And even with our gym owner, the controlling idea is '10 years younger' or '10 years longer.' I literally told the group, there was a guy there and I'm like, 'Does this sound like a good business idea for you?' And he goes, 'Yeah, I'd love to help people live 10 years longer.'"
"I said, 'Go buy 10 yearslonger.com right now.' I bought it for 12 bucks sitting in the audience."
"Yeah."
"Just bought it."
"Yeah."
"Cost him 12 Cost him I think a penny for the first year and then 12 bucks after that."
"And I said, 'Do you realize like three years from now you could be nationally known as the 10 years longer guy?'"
"Like if you're 50, I'll help you live 10 years longer."
"Yeah. And that's what these curiosity sound bites do. It's goes back to the controlling idea."
"Well, the controlling idea kind of manifests itself."
"Yeah. It's usually one of the sound bites. And we'll get there with WAB. But your tagline or your controlling idea, the controlling idea is like, what's the moral of the story?"
"What's the moral of the story? In fact, I did a Q&A at this gym owners thing and the last question, it was like a softball. I can't believe they asked me this question. They said, 'What's the one thing we should take away from your talk?' And I said, 'Did you hear that question, everybody? He wants one thing.' So my one thing that I want you to take away from the talk is to know that human beings want one thing."
"Yeah."
"They can't carry all these bowling balls of information with them. They can't go put them in they're not going to make it out of the room with 10 bowling balls of complicated. They want one thing. Every human being wants you to simplify it. I can't believe that that was the I mean, I get that question everywhere I go, but it just happened to be the last question."
"And so I said, 'What's the one what's the one controlling idea of your gym?'"
"Is it how to have the best serve in the game if you're a tennis coach? Is it um another guy came to me after the event and said, 'Don, I work with female athletes.' And I said, 'That's interesting.' He goes, 'That's my controlling idea. I work with female athletes.' And I go, 'You know, I like that, but um, what if it's that you know how to make female athletes fast?'"
"Because that's more tangible than 'I work with female athletes.' That's like saying 'I work with hamsters.' Like, you work with hamsters, do what? I said, 'Is there a single athlete you've ever worked with that wouldn't massively benefit by being faster? Volleyball, basketball, tennis, track and field, obvious, lacrosse.'"
"Like, isn't speed the main thing that would advance their careers?"
"And he said, 'It is.'"
"Yeah."
"And I said, 'Well, you're the female fast dude.'"
"Yeah."
"Right. You're the dude who makes females fast. And by the way, the way the way you make a female fast is not the way you make a man fast. It's different. Um, I don't know that that's true, but I hope that's true because it's great marketing copy."
"Yeah."
"And he was just like he lit up. He was just like, 'Oh my gosh.' I said,"
"and then I actually I actually said, 'You need to buy like fastfemale.com.' And then both OF US WENT, 'NO, DON'T do that stuff. That's going to be a bad site. Don't do that.'"
"But there's"
"that that's what I mean by a controlling idea. And it sounds so easy. It's it's it's not. You got to put some work into it."
"You got to do a little beta testing. You got to you got to get your team in a room, get them around it. You know, here's the number one idea and the controlling idea. But writing these five sound bites often manifests that controlling idea. Let me give an example."
"Problem. 'Have you ever worried about money?'"
"Empathy. 'We know how you feel.'"
"Uh answer. 'Download the WAB app.'"
"E is C is change."
"Okay."
"So 'Download the WAB app and we will help you get good with money.'"
"Yeah. That's the change. That's the transformation the customer is looking for."
"Yep."
"So the the fourth sound bite is about the change or the transformation"
"that the customer is looking and they want to go from being bad with money"
"to being good with money. Now we liked 'we will help you get good with money' so much that 'get good with money' those four words"
"became the tagline for You Need a Budget."
"Yeah. We liked it so much. And that is now the controlling idea. I think we just met recently, so they're still distributing and shipping all this these words."
"But I think that will be the controlling idea behind the entire app."
"Yeah. 'Get good with money.'"
"'Get good with money.' And then I like the inverse too to play with. For instance, imagine a lead generator that was um that that was called 'Five Signs the Man You're Dating is Bad With Money.' You think ladies are going to download that? Yeah, they are."
"Yeah."
"Because no woman wants a man to be bad with money."
"Or even if you go back to your uh female athlete analogy, it's like, you know, 'Five Reasons Why You're Slow,' you know, or something like that."
"Yeah."
"'Five Ways to Make a Any Female Fast,' you know, or whatever, you know, you you can now start playing with all sorts of front porch collateral,"
"all sorts of YouTube videos, but they all need to obey the controlling idea."
"Yeah. And the controlling idea is if your if your boyfriend is bad with money, let him download the WAB app so he can get good with money. Don't marry him until he gets good with money. Period."
"Like I'm actually preaching now. Like don't like ladies, do not marry him unless he's good with money. I'm telling you, it's a train wreck."
"Yeah."
"Um, so I it's it's interesting how even me as I'm going through somebody else's five steps and somebody else's sound bites, I get passionate."
"M."
"I get passionate about it because the story is true."
"Mhm."
"Right. If Emilion marries a guy who's bad with money, her life is going to be so painful."
"And so I'm kind of going with these WAB folks like, 'Please get this up and running before my daughter turns 17 [laughter] or 18 and starts dating.'"
"Um, you know, it's it's it's such it turns your brand into a passionate, energetic, interesting story"
"that it's now not just a budgeting app."
"It cures marriages. Yeah. In relationships and helps you. And who doesn't want the identity of good with money? Like if if somebody How much would you be compl How much would you be um complimented? And I actually would say this about you because we're friends. If somebody said to me, 'Hey, three things about Kyle Reid.' I would say 'obsessive commitment to excellence.' I would say 'devoted husband and father.' But would you be complimented if I said he's also really good with money?"
"Yeah, absolutely."
"You would. Great compliment."
"Yeah, it's a great compliment. So that that means that's a good aspirational identity. So that change"
"that change sound bite needs to be something that if it's said about your customer, they love it."
"They love it."
"Yeah."
"Right."
"Yeah."
"Now what? Okay. So the last step, the end result."
"The end result. Define that. Yeah."
"So the end result is what life looks like."
"Not what I look like, but what life looks like if I buy your product."
"Yeah."
"So it's the climactic scene. And so WAB's was, 'So you'll never have to worry about money again.'"
"Yeah. That's good."
"So let's go through them. Yep."
"'Have you ever worried about money?'"
"'We know how it feels.'"
"'Download the WAB app and get good with money so you'll never have to worry about money again.'"
"Yeah."
"It's a sentence."
"Yes."
"But it's five sound bites that made up a story or a sentence. Now, they can put that whole sentence on the back of every business card. They can put it on the header of their website."
"They can they can turn it into a thousand different lead generators. They can make ad copy with it. They can make YouTube videos with it. It should be on the cover of their proposals, their pitch decks. Uh, anytime somebody downloads the WAB app and starts paying them to use it, it should be five consecutive emails that go out. That's that are on-ramping tools. You can actually like with Nexta, this other company that I work with, we actually went inside of their user interface and I signed up as a customer"
"and we literally looked at the user interface and I said, 'Get rid of this word and put this sound bite in.' So we literally were taking the five sound bites inside the product itself and changing words inside of the product to reinforce these five sound bites in the story. But these five sound bites are the"
"it is the narrative when you say"
"we need to tell our story. That's that's what you need to do. You don't need to tell your story."
"You need to invite customers into a story. But those five steps and those five sound bites are actually what you're looking for."
"Yeah. And you know, we've used this technique with national security. We've used this technique, you know, with all sorts of I just talked to Airbnb.org."
"You know, we're But"
"when you talk about a messaging campaign and you talk about easy, repeatable sound bites that will grow your business. These are the five."
"What's fascinating to me is so many people come in, maybe they want to work with someone and they go, 'We really need a marketing campaign. Can you help us with marketing?' And I think so many people skip to, 'All right, what's your social media? Spend a dime. [clears throat]"
"Yeah."
"On a marketing campaign unless you get these five sound bites."
"And it it it it's so important that you nail these this messaging campaign, these survival sound bites because then once you nail that, then all the marketing can come after that."
"All the it informs all of the marketing. It informs your advertising. It informs your"
"your keynote presentations. It informs your webinars. It informs your lead generators. In fact, it has to. Uh, because if you get off script, as they say, you're going to start confusing people."
"Uh, the hardest part about this is not coming up with the sound bites. It's it's leaving everything else out."
"Yeah. Yeah. Finding your controlling idea."
"Finding the controlling idea and don't talk about anything else."
"Yeah. That's hard."
"And you know, Todd called the CEO who's who's becoming of he's the kind of guy that you meet and you're like, 'I want to be friends with this guy. He's really really smart.' Um, but he said, 'Don, you know, we've got this idea that that most budgeting is it feels restrictive, but our process is really about spending. It's about deciding what you're going to spend money on and spending on yourself, by the way,"
"and the rest that you want or the hobby that you want. He said, 'A lot of people, they're spending in in certain areas. It actually goes up"
"because they realize they can restrict somewhere else and spend on the things they actually love.' And he said, 'Where do we where do we put that? That's not in the five sound bites.' And the thing I said to Todd is the thing I want to say to everybody listening and that is yeah that has a place. I think the place for that messaging is actually with customers who are already paying customers and that's how you turn them into cultlike followers or brand evangelists. You explain these more complicated concepts, but that is a complicated concept that you would not want to put on the front porch."
"Yeah."
"The front porch really is bumper sticker logic."
"Yes. It's got to be like a [laughter] a four-year-old could understand it. And that's what's because that is so hard to do. And the reason it's hard to do is everybody's so close to their product."
"They know so much that they're speaking an inside language or there's the curse of knowledge is what Leela Fever calls it."
"Um"
"that it's it's almost impossible for them to write those five sound bites."
"Yeah."
"And it's the reason I've got job security for a really long time."
"Yeah. Yeah. It's important to to step back from that."
"To step way back and pretend, you know nothing."
"I could totally see someone walking in going, 'We people are increasing their spending because they they're using her tool. Let's make something off that. Let's talk about that.' Yeah."
"Imagine imagine Todd at a cocktail party and somebody says, 'What do you do?' He could say, 'I'm the CEO of WEAB.'"
"And people like, 'What's WAB?'"
"But what if he what if what if I said, 'Todd, what do you do?' And he goes, 'Well, have you ever in your entire life worried about money?'"
"And they're like, 'Well, of course.' Like, 'You ever known anybody else who's worried about money?' 'Todd, everybody's worried about money.' All right."
"'I work for a company called You Need a Budget and we feel your pain. We we feel enormous empathy for everybody who is ever worried about money. So we created an app. The app is called WAB. You just download it and it teaches you to think differently about money. Uh so that you become very very good with money. That's what we're in the business. We're in the business of making people really good with money so they never have to worry about money again. I'm I'm the CEO, by the way.'"
"'Holy crap. Are you kidding me?'"
"Like that's a completely different Imagine Todd going up middle of the stage at some, you know, big conference."
"Just say, 'Raise your hand if you've ever worried about money.'"
"Yeah."
"Yeah. You know, and and by the way, I've worried about money too. I remember I grew up so poor and blah blah. You Yeah. And now he can turn this into an hour-long slowly rolling out presentation. Then he could say, 'By the way, I I work for WEAB. It's a company called You Need a Budget, and we feel your pain.' In fact, I was just talking to a single mom the other day. He can go 10 minutes on how we feel your pain."
"And then he can say, 'So, we created the You Need a Budget app, and You Need a Budget app helps you get really good with money.' Let me tell you everything that went into the creation of the You Need a Budget app. We hired this guy. In fact, the founder and I sat and talked and then and then I started using it and then we started then we we spent some time on our user interface. Now he's talking about the section of the keynote where you're talking about the You Need a Budget app and then he's going to say, 'By the way, when people use this app, even for a couple months, they get really good with money. For instance, I just met a guy named Joey the other day.' You see what I'm saying? So this can take"
"I don't know 8 seconds"
"or 80 minutes. Yep. It's the same formula."
"And you can just go with it."
"You can just go long or go short. You can create an entire full-length documentary. Yeah."
"That just follows those five points or a YouTube video."
"Absolutely."
"And then you can create clip downs, but make sure the clip downs are"
"about one of the five sections. Maybe a clip down is just about why we care."
"Y"
"'Here's why here's why WAB cares about people who are struggling financially,' you know, and 'here's here's what it looks like to get good with money.'"
"Yeah, that's awesome. And then imagine like imagine Jessica's boyfriend is bad with money, but Amber's boyfriend is good with money. Let's look at let's look at both of them. You know, it's like so fun."
"Well, it's so tempting for so many people to hear this and go, 'That's great.' And then they they maybe sit down for a minute and and and sketch something out. But you can see the power when a business gets this right."
"When they get it right, sales go up."
"Oh, it and changes the trajectory of the business. It can change everything."
"It also changes internal morale."
"Exactly. Everybody in the business goes, 'I didn't realize we helped heroes out of a hole.' 'I didn't realize we were changing lives.' 'I've always wanted to work for a company that cares.' Those three things are in the three sound bites, crying out loud. 'I didn't realize we were creating such a better future.' Well, that's the end result soundbite."
"And and I go back to something you said earlier, this isn't easy, right? It's a wrestling, but once you get it, you can see the doors unlock and and all the puzzles pieces falling apart"
"and you use it everywhere. One of the things I said to the gym owner is I said,"
"'Raise your hand if you have a sound bite that you use that's repeatable at the end of every training session.' No hand went up. And I'm like, 'You guys are missing an amazing opportunity.'"
"Like, let's say that you're a tennis coach and every session, everybody I coach, I'm going to say the same thing. and say, 'Hey, we look we work on a lot of things to make you a great tennis player. Uh, but the big thing is I want you to have the best serve in the game.' Now, are you going to have the best serve in the game? Probably not. That probably belongs to Carlos Alcaraz right now."
"Yeah."
"But we're going to head toward it."
"And when you have the best serve in the game,"
"uh, it's amazing how much better your forehand gets and your backhand gets and your your games get, how many games you win. But the controlling idea of my entire coaching is 'best serve in the game.' Now, somebody else might say, 'Well, there's a lot more than serving, so maybe this coach.' But that's not what's going to happen. What's going to happen is anybody who wants tennis lessons and there's five coaches to choose from"
"and you say, 'What what coach do you use?' Oh, I use Jack over here. He's he's known for creating the best serve in the game. I'm sorry. Jack's getting all the business because he's known for something."
"Yes. Exactly."
"He's not just known for tennis coaching."
"Yep."
"He's known for something specific."
"The fastest woman on the field. Yeah. You know, or whatever."
"Yeah. Totally. And I've seen you do this in even consulting sessions at the end where you're very keen on at a coaching or consulting to ask that, hey, if we wouldn't have talked about this today, where would"
"Yeah. It's the question that I do at the end of one of these sessions."
"I say, 'If we wouldn't have if you're if you wouldn't have brought your team to Nashville, we wouldn't have spent the day together. How long would it have taken you to get this done?'"
"There you go."
"And the the answer that I always get is 'we wouldn't have got it done.' It wouldn't have happened. One guy said '16 years.' And I was like, 'Well, that's awfully specific.' Uh, why 16?"
"And he goes, 'Cuz we've been trying for 16 years.'"
"Yeah. And um what what that does is it's a it's a it's a question I ask at the end of the session to make sure the customer understands the value that we've gotten. So imagine like a gym owner working out with 20 or 30, 50 year olds. And by the way, the '10 Years Longer' program, if your gym membership is $90 a month, the '10 Years Longer' cohort is $1,000 a month."
"Yeah. There's it's a $910 difference in the price that you can ask because you're I'll pay $1,000 a month to live 10 years longer, but I won't for a gym membership."
"Yeah. Just for a standard."
"Yeah. So, what that means though is you got to put together a really valuable program like I got to meet with a nutritionist and I'm doing BMI and I'm doing all this kind of stuff. You know, maybe you're there's a doctor associated and we're doing some peptides and things like this. You can tell."
"Uh, you know, a sauna protocol. There's I'll pay a,000 bucks a month for that and I'll pay a,000 bucks a month to do it in a community."
"But that sound bite at the end of every session, 'Hey guys, the reason we're doing this, we're going to live 10 years longer.'"
"That's right."
"And he's reminding me of why I'm paying a,000 bucks a month. So these sound bites are not just like sound bites that you leave on a napkin. You've got to get them out there in very specific places"
"in a Story Brand messaging campaign."
"Yeah."
"And a messaging campaign is like running for president. It's when they ask about the economy, you're going to say this. When you're talking to female voters, you're going to say this. When you're talking to the teachers union, you're going to say this. And you need to memorize it. You need to do your work. You need to do your research. You need to do your homework. You need to know before going into this meeting what your sound bites are that you're going to repeat. You know, before every session, you need to know you're going to start the session this way, end the session this way. So, it's it's a way of living, not just a messaging campaign. But when you look at billion-dollar brands, this is what they have figured out. Go to Chick-fil-A and say 'thank you.' Do they say 'you're welcome'?"
"No."
"They say 'my pleasure.' Y"
"because of a messaging campaign."
"That wasn't an accident. It took David Salyers at Chick-fil-A three years to execute that campaign. Three freaking years of discipline. And hey, don't say 'you're welcome.' 'We do not say you're welcome.' You know, he's got a little BB gun. He's like shooting people. [laughter] He's not, by the way. David would kill me for saying that. David is a very loving man."
"Uh, but it it's a lot of hard work. And so, you got to think of what those five sound bites are. You've got to be really creative. They need to be effective, good sound bites. Then you need to be really creative about where you execute, where you ship those. And then you need to be disciplined and run it like a campaign with incredible discipline to get those sound bites out there."
"But they're word free, man. They're free. And if you figure out the right words and you're and you're disciplined to use them, your business just begins to grow."
"Yeah."
"And also, just one final note, when you have words that are that good, people remember them and they repeat them. Now listen, if I asked you just everybody listening, what are the five sound bites for You Need a Budget? I bet you 70% of the people listening right now if they just stopped"
"can get really close to them."
"Yep. And they can repeat them to other people."
"Exactly."
"If I said You Need a Budget and and I said it's the app that helps you get good with money."
"Let me ask you this. If have you listened to this and you've thought, 'I should check out the You Need a Budget app' or 'my daughter needs the You Need a Budget app.' You know why? Because we repeated sound bites that made you want to"
"That's right."
"made you want made you made you think that that app was valuable. Yep."
"Why don't you have that for your business? Let's create it."
"Yeah. Don, what's one thing that people should take away from this episode?"
"One thing is one thing. [laughter]"
"What's the controlling idea of your business?"
"Yeah."
"Hey, listen. Everybody should know we're doing a Story Brand Your Business workshop, a live event. Come to Nashville, Tennessee,"
"and I will be in the room the entire time. I think it's two and a half days."
"Yep."
"And you're going to leave with five sound bites and they're going to be good. And not only that, we're going to have a bunch of Story Brand certified guides, our marketing community, who are going to be able to give you live feedback, but you can get that. Yep."
"So, keep an eye out at storybrand.com and make sure to come join us live in Nashville, Tennessee and leave with your five sound bites and also just hear best practices of where to put those sound bites and what to do. That event's going to be about two grand. If you can't make $200,000 off those five sound bites, uh, I would be shocked."
"Yeah. Okay, everybody. Thanks so much for listening and remember when it comes to your messaging, once you know how to say it, people will listen. See you next time."
Thanks for listening to the Story Brand podcast. No matter where you are in your marketing and messaging journey, get the tools, the training, and the support you need to start clarifying that message at storybrand.com. And don't forget to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. And if you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and then leave a comment letting us know what resonated with you and what we can unpack to help your business grow in a future episode. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.