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

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Do This, NOT That: Marketing Tips with Jay Schwedelson
Host: GURU Media Hub (Jay Schwedelson)
Episode: The 5 Soundbites That Make People Buy 😳 Donald Miller from StoryBrand at Guru Conference | Ep. 470
Date: January 2, 2026
Guest: Donald Miller (Founder and CEO, StoryBrand)

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Overview

This episode features a high-energy, insight-packed interview between Jay Schwedelson and Donald Miller, renowned marketer and founder of StoryBrand. Miller breaks down the science of clear messaging using his “five soundbites” framework, explaining why simplicity—not sophistication—compels customers to act. The conversation explores cognitive load, the crucial difference between being the “guide” vs. the “hero,” and why these principles are even more vital in today’s AI-driven marketing landscape. The episode is loaded with practical examples, memorable analogies, and actionable advice that apply to businesses of any size or sector.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Power of Simplicity and Messaging (01:52–05:00)

• Words Sell, Not Design:
  Donald Miller opens by debunking the idea that logos or “pretty websites” are what drive purchases. Instead, he argues, it all comes down to the words—and the fewer, the better.

  “Amazon.com is an ugly website… but it’s text-heavy. And I realized that when I buy something, it’s because I read some words that make me want to buy something.” — Donald Miller (02:12)

• Reducing Cognitive Load:
  Miller says consumer brains seek “low cognitive load.” The more you make a customer think, the less they buy. StoryBrand’s framework exists to reduce this friction.

  “If you make people think, they’re not going to buy from you.” — Donald Miller (03:16)

Clarifying StoryBrand: The Five Soundbites (05:34–08:13)

• Invite the Customer Into the Story:
  StoryBrand isn’t about telling your own narrative, but inviting the buyer to see themselves as the hero. Miller distills any pitch to five soundbites:
  • Problem (the hole they’re in)
  • Empathy (the guide cares)
  • Answer (the rope you offer)
  • Change (the transformation)
  • End result (happily ever after)

  "You do that with five sound bites. 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… End result is the happy ever after…" — Donald Miller (06:54)

• Repetition Drives Results:
  These five soundbites should be repeated “a million times,” across all channels, until you “own the hole” in the customer’s mind.

The Problem with Complexity & the Trojan Horse Principle (08:41–12:38)

• Focus on One Problem:
  Companies often want to tout all their features, especially in B2B or SaaS. But trying to “own ten holes” means you own none.

  “A story cannot be about ten different things… you have dramatically increased the cognitive load of the movie-going audience.” — Donald Miller (08:46)

• The Oura Ring Example:
  Marketed as “a sleep lab on your finger”—they focused on sleep, sales soared; the rest of the features sell themselves after purchase.

  “If you lead with all ten things, you might as well lead with nothing.” — Donald Miller (09:49)

• The Power of the Soundbite:
  Even in politics, Miller notes, a simple phrase beats nuanced plans, e.g., “Build a wall” outperformed a comprehensive book on immigration.

  “The sound bite beat the book… They are responding to a sound bite.” — Donald Miller (12:04)

Marketing in the Age of AI and Search (12:38–16:01)

• Owning a Problem in AI:
  As customers increasingly seek information via AI, it’s more critical than ever to repeatedly use the same, simple problem statement—so AI (and humans) associate you with that “hole.”

  “The more you repeat sound bites, the more you convert. First, your team and second, your customers.” — Donald Miller (17:47)

• YNAB (You Need a Budget) Example:
  They simplified from nuanced messaging to: “Have you ever worried about money?”—owning a universal problem.

Internal Alignment & Team Messaging (16:37–18:45)

• Consistent Messaging Across Teams:
  Every employee—from janitor to CEO—should answer, “What do we do?” with the same (soundbite-based) language.
• Geico’s Success:
  “Save 15% on car insurance” was repeated in $240M of advertising. Message memorization, not diversity, scales a brand.

Simplicity Over Sophistication & the Dangers of Nuance (18:45–20:19)

• Complexity Kills:
  Sophistication and nuance in marketing are recipes for failure. Only simplicity wins.
• Real Estate Agent Example:
  Instead of saying, “I’m a real estate agent,” switch to: “87% of people never get to live in their dream home. I make sure they do.”

  “He’s not a real estate agent. He’s a man on a mission.” — Donald Miller (19:41)

Using and Coaching AI for Better Messaging (20:40–24:22)

• AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement:
  Miller embraces AI for brainstorming and testing, but insists you must guide it with a framework and judge the results.

  “AI is a freshman in college who thinks a little too linear… I’m coaching AI with a framework in mind.” — Donald Miller (20:43)

• A/B Testing Soundbites:
  Test everything. Use AI as a “focus group” to imagine customer reactions, then test with real people.

Storytelling in Pop Culture & Email Marketing Applications (24:51–29:21)

• Storytelling Is Universal:
  The five-soundbite framework applies everywhere, including movies (and Miller can’t help but call out plot structures at the theater) and email marketing.
• Email Structure:
  The five chords (soundbites) can be used to structure emails, landing pages, and more. Problem statements as subject lines usually outperform clever but indirect ones.

  “If you open an email with the problem, then you empathize…then you position your product as the solution…that email will outperform anything you’ve ever written...” — Donald Miller (27:29)

• Copy vs. Images:
  In most cases, strong copy beats visuals, except perhaps for fashion or aspirational identity.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Simplicity vs. Sophistication:

  “Nuance, complexity, sophistication is a recipe for failure. If you try to sound sophisticated, you’re going to fail. It needs to be simple.” — Donald Miller (18:45)

• On Internal Team Alignment:

  “Every good messaging campaign is an exercise in memorization. What it actually takes is coming up with the right sound bites and then ridiculous discipline and repeating those sound bites.” — Donald Miller (17:52)

• On the Universal Power of Story:

  “There’s no other tool on the planet that will cause a person to stop daydreaming that’s more powerful than a story.” — Donald Miller (25:48)

• On the Role of AI:

  “AI is a freshman in college who thinks a little too linear… I’m coaching AI but I’m coaching it with a framework in mind.” — Donald Miller (20:45)

• On Team Messaging Consistency:

  “If I ask… one by one, ‘What do you do?’—I want them all to say the same thing.” — Donald Miller (16:39)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:52] – Why words matter more than design
• [05:34] – The five soundbites explained
• [08:41] – Why you must focus on one problem
• [10:52] – Customer journey post-purchase and upsell philosophy
• [12:01] – Politics and marketing: the power of soundbites
• [13:14] – Applying soundbites and repetition for AI search
• [16:37] – Team alignment and internal messaging
• [18:45] – Simplicity vs. sophistication; failing through complexity
• [20:40] – How to use and guide AI for message testing
• [24:51] – The emotional power of stories in movies
• [25:48] – Structuring emails with five soundbites
• [28:13] – Copy vs. images in marketing emails
• [29:36] – How to get access to StoryBrand resources

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Conclusion & Resources

Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework is about stripping away complexity, inviting customers into a transformation journey, and repeating simple, meaningful soundbites until both your team and the market recognize and remember you. Miller’s insights into using these core principles across traditional and AI-driven channels are invaluable for marketers facing today’s short attention spans and algorithm-based decision-makers.

To learn more or get help crafting your five soundbites, visit: StoryBrand.com

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Perfect for:
Marketers, business leaders, copywriters, sales teams, and anyone looking to cut through the noise—whether B2B, B2C, startup, or enterprise.

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for 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 as an episode because I got so much out of it. I 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 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 Coach Builder, they help businesses and leaders really clarify their messaging by using this amazing structure. Right? And over 1 million business leaders have discovered Donald Miller, Donald Miller's powerful story brand, this whole framework. He's a genuine, amazing guy, a monster in the marketing world. I'm so excited to have him here. Donald, welcome to the stage.

[B]

Thanks so much for having me, Jay. Good to be with you guys.

[A]

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 Story Brand is and the enormous impact that it has, can you just break it down? What is it that you do?

[B]

Well, years ago, I started noticing that the reason people bought things was not because of brand colors or logos or style guides or any of that. In fact, probably every person watching 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 into product copy and taglines and all that kind of stuff. And, and 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 story brand framework that reduces the cognitive load that people will encounter in order to buy something. And we saw massive increases in sales. For example, 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 the everything but the fish. And 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, their 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? I said, yes, they will. They test marketed that in a test market. They put kids love aquariums everywhere. 99 increase in sales. And if you think about it, what that, that's a hundred million dollar market. So you're talking about 100 million to 199 million with no additional capital expenditure, just words. What actually happened there was they decreased the cognitive load. 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. They 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, 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 first framework that you filter your message through, and it reduces the cognitive load and increases sales.

[A]

You 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 then you start to layer in and this idea of you having a huge 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?

[B]

Yes, I'm literally talking about inviting customers into a story using five sound bites. That's it. And they are specific sound bites. There's the problem. Sound bite, empathy, answer, change, and end result. Those five sound bites 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, stability. That character falls into a hole, their 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 guys 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 fallen into a hole. So the very first thing you want to do is a problem. Sound bite. So you own the hole. You 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. And you do that with five sound bites. Problem is the hole you're in. Empathy is me positioning myself as a guide. Answer is the rope being thrown in the hole changes 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 sound bites. Now, the beautiful thing is you take those five sound bites and you populate all of your marketing, your landing pages, your websites, your social media, your lead generators, your YouTube scripts, all of it need to come back to those five sound bites 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.

[A]

All right, this is amazing, and I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but does this apply to business, to business, nonprofit, consumer, small business, big business? This apply to every size, every industry?

[B]

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.

[A]

All right, so let me layer something in here because a lot of people that are here today, like, this is amazing. I love this reframe. But my company is, you know, 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?

[B]

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 movie going audience. And they won't like the movie. Just won't know why they don't like it. It's because you're making them think. You know. 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. 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 stop 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. And 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 problems, 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 to. That a sound bite helps you reduce the cognitive load right off the bat. And then, then after you're in a relationship with them, you have earned. Right. Earned the right to explain more. But I would say the number one problem most. Most people deal with is they try to explain all the benefit and value up front. And all they're doing is making people.

[A]

Think, okay, I want to go off script for a second 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.

[B]

That's a great way to say it.

[A]

Okay. So it was like Apple leads with the phone. Now all the other stuff I spend with Apple or whatever, so now I got them in. Okay, they bought the first product, whatever. But I 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 for them? I'm doing like a 1 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.

[B]

Yeah. I would say let's get them to the other side of the paywall first.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

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. That's the mistake. And it's an. 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 sound bite. The sound bite. Beat the book.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

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. They are responding to a sound bite. And if you don't have that sound bite 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.

[A]

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 story Random, okay, my website's 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. And I don't leave ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity or any of. 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 that within this AI world?

[B]

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. And 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, okay, problem. Have you ever worried about money? That's it. That's the sound bite. Have you ever worried about money? They now own the worried about money hole. Now, how many people have ever worried about money? What percentage of the population of human beings?

[A]

100%.

[B]

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 owns that hole. They're the only one. They can scale that to $10 million 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 sound bite, and then you disseminate that sound bite relentlessly. Every time you're on camera, you say it. You put on the back of your business part card, you put it on your, 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, 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. Yes, you know, you see what I'm saying now you're training AI to think of you when it thinks of that hole. If you have, 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 sound bite. And then of course, you do the same with empathy, answer, change and end result. And now you own the story of that person getting out of that hole.

[A]

I think that's so valuable and I want everyone to really understand what that all means. Like, even my own business, we've been putting out certain facts or statements over and over and over and over again. Now when I go to ChatGPT and I ask things, it's coming back to me like a boomerang. I'm seeing an 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, big, bigger businesses, whatever. Is it important to get that tagline, that, that thing out that everybody is marching and use it and saying it and putting out their social post, everything, because it helps to get the LLMs, the large language models to then grab it? Is that, is that the way to think about it?

[B]

It is critical that you get your entire team answering the Question the right way. So if I ask if you have a hundred 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? I 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 salesforce. 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 sound bites and then ridiculous discipline and repeating those sound bites. The CEO should repeat those five sound bites 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 sound bites. And the more you repeat sound bites, the more you convert. First, your team and second, your customers. Now your customers say, why do you buy it 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 sound bite? And did they grow? They grew exponentially. By the way, that was a Warren Buffett move. He bought the company, came up with the sound bites, went from about 11 million in advertising to 240 million 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.

[A]

That that's a fail that you see? Okay, somebody reaches out story brand. Like you 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. Does that. Is that a recipe for failure? Do you see that a lot? You might.

[B]

New 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, okay, that's terrible, but tell me, what else do you say after that? You know, what's your. What's your differentiator? Well, I can help them find my dream home. I said, okay, 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, dom, what do you do? I would say, well, 87% 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.

[A]

Cool.

[B]

He's going to own a crisis that 87% of people never get to live in their dream home. Now, 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 sound bite. So that's what we're looking for for everybody watching this video. What is your sound bite at which you own the hole and you get the hero out of the hole.

[A]

Dude, this is great, this whole getting out of the hole thing. This is. This is amazing. So, all right, I want to. 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. And what is Donald Miller's take on going AI and having it help you write stuff? Are we anti. Do you never use it for that? Where are you at on this?

[B]

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, give 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, you're going to say, hey, I really like this one. Can you boil this down to a sound bite? You know what? That sound bite is too nuanced. You got cute and clever with me. I need to decrease the cognitive load on my customer understanding. That's what you do. 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. But if you just go and ask it for an answer, it's going to give you the wrong answer.

[A]

Yeah, well, I'm glad you said that because I think people that are trying to not use AI at all, I mean, I don't know who they are anymore, but that is ridiculous. I'm curious about them 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 kids enjoy fish? Do you come up with 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? You're like, this is it.

[B]

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 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 school teacher, a fan of Donald Miller and somebody who's never heard of me. They'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, okay, 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, and it'll give me those lines and then I drop it back in. I say, okay, give me the same thing now that those lines are in and it'll give me better and better results. You want to do the same thing with taglines, with landing page copy, with lead generators, you know, and, 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 just a fantastic tool. You're not using it. You ought to.

[A]

I mean, I need to reduce cognitive load in my life. I'm going to recommend my friends when they text me to my wife because I'm very simple minded human being. I mean, I need to make this.

[B]

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 sound bites that are going to help you make money.

[A]

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, no, that movie's terrible. They don't have a hero or they're not falling in a hole or like, is going to a movie next to Donald Miller a bizarre experience?

[B]

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, 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. 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 stop 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.

[A]

Wow. That is 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 then what happens after they open it? Like, how does it all work with email?

[B]

Well, there are some formulas and best practices that work really well. Your subject line, you know, again, it's. 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 it's best practice. If you say struggling with X? It's going to be a great subject line. Are you worried about finances right now? It's going to be a great subject line. Now we could do something like five ways. Taylor Swift is brilliant at managing her finances, and it's going to do well, even though it's not a problem, because it's about Taylor Swift. So there's all sorts of little nuances that you can get into. But once you understand how to invite a customer into a story using five sound bites, you now have five chords that you can write songs with. When before you didn't have any chords, you just had gut instinct. You don't want to trust gut instinct. You want a science behind what you're creating. But yes, if you open an email with the problem, then you empathize with the problem. I care about you. I don't want you to struggle with this. Then you position your product as the solution to that problem. Then you say, here's how you're going to transform after you use my product and be a better version of yourself. And then you say here's the happily ever after end result that your life is going to be that that email will outperform anything you've ever written, almost assuredly.

[A]

And do you feel like. And I only get too in the weeds on emails and all, but here we are, an email conference. Is that in general, whether you're a business or a consumer brand, whatever, is that able to be articulated better in a like a letter format email, just a few lines or do you think you can get the same thing across and accomplish the same same goals with a nice pretty thing with all the images?

[B]

You know, that's another art question, like how do you create art out of these chords? But I would say if you go to an ad agency and pay them 100 grand to write you a really great email and you come to me and I use my five sound bites, I'm probably gonna beat them. I'm not saying I'm gonna beat them. I'm probably going to beat them. If you have a gorgeous, gorgeous, beautifully designed email and I have all text, I'm probably going to beat them. And the reason is they're going to increase your cognitive load. I'm going to decrease the cognitive load. The only exception would be like fashion where you're selling an aspirational identity and you got a really good looking underwear model. And I'm trying to write copy about why you should buy my underwear because it's more comfortable. I'm probably going to get beat by the guy with the shirt off, to be honest with you. But other than that, my copy is going to beat your images.

[A]

All right. Skims.

[B]

Pictures. How many, how many words is it? How many pictures? A picture is worth a thousand words, you know, But I would actually say not true. I can write a sentence that will beat your image.

[A]

I love it. Skims. Okay, maybe not. We'll leave that over for Kim Kardashian to send out the pictures. But everything else, I think Donald Miller is going to win. All right, Donald, for everybody that wants to get involved with your world, we're going to put it right now. It's in the chat. It's already pinned there. StoryBrand.com what's going to happen when they.

[B]

Go to StoryBrand.com all right, StoryBrand.com I'm going to help you write five sound bites that become your tagline, your lead generator stimulation. It's going to dominate Your entire messaging campaign. Those five sound bites you need to disseminate as a messaging campaign to get the public to memorize them. They are very strategically and specifically written. There are four ways that I help you do that. There's an on demand course that goes live about two weeks after people watch this. So in about two weeks that goes live. There's a live workshop in Nashville that we limit to only 100 people. We have a giant wait list, but I can really only help 100 people at a time. And we have coaches in there, so it's designed to be intimate. There is a private workshop where you hire our facilitator to come to your building. And then if you want to spend a full day with me, and it's one day, but it's two zoom calls on the beforehand, two zoom calls after, and it's an eight week where you basically have my phone number. And that's called a Donald Miller strategy session. Same, same deliverable. Five, five sound bites. Four different ways to buy that. And it'[e-mail] to learn about all of them.

[A]

Listen, everybody that's out there, I will tell you, I have learned more from Donald Miller than anybody else that I could rattle off. The guy is just. He puts out so much information. You got to go to Story Brand. You got to check out. It's incredible. Donald, thank you so much for being a leader in the space and thanks for being here at Guru Conference.

[B]

Jay. One of the most fun conversations I've had in a while. Thanks for having me on.

[A]

All right, we'll see you soon. You did it. You made it to the end. But wait, the party is not over. Listen, I want to keep hanging out. Subscribe to this podcast and if it wasn't the worst podcast you've ever, ever listen to, give it a five star review. Why not? But you know what? I want to do even more with you. Go to guru mediahub.com and we can partner there. You can find out about all of our free events, all of our stuff, and if you're epically bored, go to jschwedelson.com and we could stay connected. You could find my newsletter and everything else I got going on. Thanks for being here and hope you subscribe.