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- [00:01]
Kevin Gentry
Hey there with a quick message. First, I want to talk to you about Zefie. Zephy is a way that delivers 100% of your donor's contribution directly to your organization. No more credit card fees, other platform fees. Our team uses Zephy. It's easy to set up, easy to use. Urge you to check it out. Zephy.com register find out how it delivers 100% of a donor's gift to your cause.
- [00:30]
Don Miller
If you can come up with sound bites that help people realize how your product can help them survive and they don't have to think very hard to understand that connection, your sales are going to go up. So there are five specific sound bites that I think are very important to invite a customer into a story in which they use your product to save the day and to survive. And they happen to spell out the acronym peace. He is problem, E is empathy, A is answer, C is change, and E is end result. So let me break that down. You need a soundbite and the most important sound bite you can come up with is your problem sound bite. A story is really about a character that is in peace. They're at peace, they're stable and they fall into a hole and that hole destabilizes their peace. And then a guide comes along, throws a rope down the hole, pulls them out of the hole and they are re stabilized to peace. So they're at peace, their piece is destabilized and then they are restabilized.
- [01:35]
Podcast Host Outro
Welcome to the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry and this is the place where we celebrate bold moves and big ideas. Each week I sit down with inspiring leaders, entrepreneurs and change makers who are making a significant impact in their careers and in their communities. Whether you're looking to level up your leadership, pursue your passion, or just get inspired to take your next big leap, this is where those stories come to life. Now if you're listening on iTunes, YouTube or anywhere else you tune into podcasts, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you'll never miss an episode. Now let's dive in to what it means to truly go big.
- [02:19]
Kevin Gentry
Well, today on the Going Big podcast, I'm very pleased to have Don Miller. Don Miller is a best selling author, entrepreneur and one of the most consequential voices on the idea of stories. You may know him from many of his books. Blue like jazz more than 20 years ago had a tremendous effect in capturing a whole generation, but more recently certainly is building a story brand. More than a million copies have been sold and has really transformed how leaders and organizations really communicate their message. And that's what we want to dive in today to some degree. But really, it's the whole story of Don and your amazing life. You've lived a remarkable life focused on the idea of connection. And that's what really attracted me to have you on the Going Big Podcast, because you've taken this concept of the story brand and turned it into a full fledged institution. And just I want to dig into your personal story, your journey, and how this came about and how today you've really become such a consequential leader. So welcome. Thanks for joining us on the Going Big podcast, man.
- [03:30]
Don Miller
It's really great to be with you, Kevin.
- [03:33]
Kevin Gentry
Well, right out, right from the start, what is up with story? Why? Why is storytelling so important?
- [03:42]
Don Miller
Well, the human brain actually daydreams about 30% of the time. I don't know if you're familiar with some of the statistics, but it is really, really hard to get people to pay attention. And if you start a story, you start a Netflix series or you start a Harry Potter book. What's fascinating about the human brain is it won't daydream. It will pay attention. And anybody who's ever attended a church service knows that you daydream, daydream, daydream. And then the pastor says something that starts a story and you start paying attention. And then when he's done with the story, you start to daydream again. So it's actually a fascinating phenomenon about the human brain. So years ago, I wrote memoirs and I wrote books with lots of stories in them, and I studied story and story structure in order to write those books. Those books ended up doing really well. And when I'd written the seventh or eighth one, I decided I didn't want to write another memoir. I wanted to write a book about story and story structure and how to use it as a messaging device, a framework that would help you bring attention to whatever initiative or idea or business that you were running. And that book ended up being Building a Story Brand. And accidentally, I found myself with a consulting and coaching company, coaching people on how to come up with the sound bites they would need to bring attention to whatever they were doing. And that has been a fascinating decade. Better part of a decade that I've been doing this. I've really enjoyed meeting people like you and your listeners and just saying, hey, what are you trying to build? What are you trying to grow? What are you trying to bring attention to? What nonprofit are you building? What initiative are you building? What legislation are you Trying to pass what position are you trying to get elected to? Everybody from national defense in the China Policy department to the National Security, to Joe down the street trying to sell more plungers. And it's been a blast helping people come up with the sound bites they need to invite customers into a story and get attention.
- [05:42]
Kevin Gentry
Well, we got a lot to cover today because you've touched on already a lot of very different and important things. And it is tough, I think, for people to understand the importance and power of story. Many kind of get it, but still don't even know the application. So maybe we can dive into that. But I want to start a little bit more about you. You've written first in your memoirs, your early writings about how you grew up without a father and how that influenced and affected a lot of your life. You've talked a lot about your faith, your faith joy journey, how that is still such an important part of your life. And then as you say, this, this how you, whether you stumbled upon it or whatever, this idea of story and story brand. So just tell us, if you would, a little bit more about your personal journey. Don, what, what's your story?
- [06:31]
Don Miller
That's a good one. I think I could probably tell anybody else's story better than I can tell mine. You know, when you're so close to it, it's hard to do. But I, I grew up in Houston, Texas, and my dad, as you mentioned, split when I was a kid. So I, I grew up in a home with a mom that was trying to do everything rather heroically, by the way, an extremely strong mom who was determined to give us a great childhood. And so I have enormous respect for women, even if they're married. My gosh, it's hard to, to raise a family, but especially without the help of a, of a good man, it's even harder. So I grew up in that kind of environment, probably didn't show hardly any promise at all in high school. I don't think anybody would have predicted me to do anything and got interested in the written word. I was, I was at a debate, just happened to be at a debate, and the chairman of the American Debate Club had some poems memorized and recited these poems. And I looked around at all the girls in the room, and they were paying a lot of attention to this guy. And so I thought, I'm thinking I'm going to memorize me some poems. I started memorizing poems for probably the wrong reasons, but that was my Introduction to Literature. And from that point on, I just dreamed maybe someday you know, I could write a book and maybe someday I could be one of these smart people who, who you know is able to do something like that. Even though I barely got out of high school and really didn't go to college at all, and a guy gave me a shot at a publishing company working in the warehouse, even though I didn't have a degree. And four years later, I was the president of that publishing company and realized I've got kind of a knack for business and I've got a knack for understand literature and what books should be published and what books shouldn't. And I don't know where that NAT came from, but I had it. And that introduced me to the business side of publishing. And then one night I said, I can write my own book. I always wanted to. And I did. And that book did not do well. And then I wrote another one and that book ended up on the New York Times. So suddenly I was. I was a writer. I just told you 20 years worth of that story. It was not fast. And then, you know, kept writing and then finally wrote Building a Story Brand. And that made me a messaging consultant. But I would say, you know, the only thing, the only thing, Kevin, that I've ever been really good at is words and just figuring out what words to say in order to plant ideas in people's minds. And I'm grateful for that gift. It's partly gift and part just discipline and honing in on learning how to do that and studying a lot of structures. But that's basically my story. And then after I sold millions of books, really got sick of talking about myself and discovered. Well, because I've had all this practice writing these books, I can help other people figure out what their story is and how to tell their story and how to introduce themselves to the world in such a way that they get attention. And that turned into a second career that I very, very much enjoyed. Most people, most people don't know how to talk about what they do. And I like helping them.
- [09:34]
Kevin Gentry
Well, Don, I love what you said about the red word and the book of poetry. I remember you're a great writer. And I remember. And I think it was blue, like jazz. You talked about how you used to have Pride and Prejudice on your bookshelf behind you as a way of attracting girls or impressing them, if you want to comment on that. And also, what do you learn from spending time with hippies?
- [09:59]
Don Miller
Well, I'm very grateful for the sort of literary side of my, of my early years. I. I just Absolutely became obsessed with the written word and especially John Steinbeck, Annie Dillard, Anne Lamott, J.D. salinger. You know, these were the writers that I thought were almost like magicians and their ability to put something on a page and take you into an entire other world, almost like you're in a trance. And I wanted to be able to do that and assumed I was really good at it. I found out pretty quickly I wasn't. And I needed to work a great deal in order to get good at it. But. But, you know, I kept honing my, my craft and, and trying to figure out how to write. And what I never realized was all those years I spent writing books were going to help me create messages that would build companies and that would help explain foreign policy and help explain why we should bring these three pieces of legislation together to do something about our immigration reform. You know, to be able to sort of apply that cordless screwdriver to so many other things. And by cordless screwdriver, I mean the ability to figure out what. What order to put words in and what to say in order to cause the public to buy in that. That, to me, was something I never in a million years saw coming. And I'm very grateful that I was able to stumble across that. That.
- [11:34]
Kevin Gentry
I want to talk a little bit about your sort of view of humanity and how that's affected you and how it ties to your faith as well. But looking back, was there a moment that you would see as sort of a before and after that really affected how you think about, know, living a life of purpose and meaning? Because that, clearly you wrote about that in the beginning and now you're doing that to greatly affect important things in people's lives. Is there a. Is there a key moment?
- [11:59]
Don Miller
Well, there was a season, and it was close to a moment. I rode my bicycle across America and ended up in Washington, D.C. started in LA, ended up in D.C. we did one more day after D.C. to get to the Atlantic, but I. We stopped at the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. and I bought for the first time, I've bought many copies since, but I bought Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. And there's a lot in that book, but the two principal ideas that changed my life forever. One is that mankind is not actually motivated by the pursuit of pleasure the way Sigmund Freud has posited. He's motivated by the pursuit of meaning and the way that you experience meaning, essentially. And this is a. This is a very reductionistic summary of Frankl's ideas, but to sacrifice on behalf of a project that serves the world. And if you do that, if you sacrifice, you know, you suffer to some degree, even if it's just the suffering of self discipline, getting up in the morning and getting some work done, and you create something for others that benefits others, you will experience a deep sense of meaning. And of course, we all do that. As parents, we sacrifice for the benefit of others. As husbands, we sacrifice for the benefit of others. Anybody listening to me who leads any group of people knows what it means to sacrifice for the benefit of others. And I love what Jordan Peterson said. I heard him say something recently. The more responsibility you take in life, the more meaning you get to experience. Not the more pleasure, by the way, because there's less pleasure, but the more meaning. And that became a foundational idea for the way that I would live my life from that point on, that I always wanted to involve myself in some form of sacrifice. And sacrifice is a dramatic word, but some form of discipline that necessitated me getting up or other people would suffer. And I've lived my life by that rule for about 25 years. And I would say there's been really rough days. You know, I'm not going to lie to you, and I've made a lot of mistakes, but there's probably not been a single day in 25 years when I didn't experience a deep sense of meaning. And I personally was not involved in a story that was interesting to me. And before that, I'm 54, so, you know, there are 29 years before that where there were plenty of days when I found myself in what Victor Frank would call an existential vacuum. I don't know why we exist. This is. This is depressing. I don't know why I keep getting out of bed in the morning. And when I learned to plant myself solidly into a story in which I was distracted by a project that served others, I just experienced a great deal more meaning.
- [14:51]
Kevin Gentry
Well, thanks for mentioning Viktor Frankl and Man Search for Meaning. That's a, That's a such an important book. And for those listening, if you're not familiar with it, check it out. It's. It's really something. Well, Don, you began, you know, your career and you're writing with a lot of very deeply personal memoirs. Your book, A Thousand. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, did that become the sort of bridge for story? And, and the idea of storybrand. Was that a. Is that a key part? Tell us about that.
- [15:21]
Don Miller
Yes, well, what the book was about. The book was about A group of filmmakers, a director, and a producer who wanted to make a movie out of a memoir that I'd written. And they came to me and said, we'd love to make this movie. And we worked together for the better part of two years to turn the book into a screenplay.
- [15:38]
Kevin Gentry
Oh, wow.
- [15:39]
Don Miller
And that was the introduction to me of story and story structure and story frameworks and all the strategies that you use to try to get an audience to pay attention. And that became my entire next career. I mean, I turned that into A million miles in a thousand years, and then. And then turned it into a business application to clarify your message using narrative structures. And that became Building a story brand, which, you know, as you mentioned, sold over a million copies. And I've since turned into a consulting firm with 30 employees and about 450 certified guides who go out and do marketing for people. So, yeah, that. That was a foundational pivot in my career to. To learn about story and then help other people tell their stories.
- [16:26]
Kevin Gentry
All right, so we've been having the audience wait long enough. So what is story brand? Tell us about this. This very important thing that you stumbled upon and then have developed.
- [16:39]
Don Miller
I'll. I'll tell you the foundational idea and the most applicable idea behind storybrand. And it's this. There are five sound bites that you can create, and you can repeat their custom sound bites specifically for you and your business. There are five of them that if you. If you create them, which takes a little bit of work and then you repeat them, will cause a lot more people to pay attention to you and will cause everybody to understand what it is that you're trying to do and why it's so important and what role they can play. And those five sound bites effectively invite people into a story in which they use your product or. Or your idea to make their lives better. And so if you really want to boil down what I do for people, I help them come up with those five sound bites. And then I look at their landing pages, their websites, their lead generators, their YouTube videos, their social media channels, their proposals, even their contracts, their product descriptions, every aspect of their business. And I start using those five sound bites in that marketing collateral. I start. We start crossing out what they were saying before on the billboards, on the side of the road, on the header of their website. We start crossing that stuff out because it's never any good. And we replace it with the sound bites that we wrote together. And what they see, the response is dramatic. I was just with a company called you need A budget that has seen a 400% increase in their social media engagement. There was another guy that I helped him come up with sound bites, and we wrote the product descriptions, and he saw. He happened to see a 400% increase in product sales. You know, we're working with national defense right now, national security, and we would expect a much quicker congressional authorization on some of the projects that they need funding for. You know, when people understand what it is that. That you are trying to do and why it's important, and even more specifically why it's important to them, you get a yes a lot faster. So to me, it's, you know, my job is anybody who's trying to explain something and get other people involved, whether that. That's buying a product or. Or getting a vote or a congressional authorization, you gotta be very disciplined in how you talk about it. Otherwise you'll lose people. And I'm the guy they call to help them talk about it. Cool.
- [19:05]
Kevin Gentry
Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you are intrigued by this idea, building a story brand, I can't recommend it enough. Just Google Donald Miller and Story brand. There's so much to tap. Don, I'd love to hear a little bit more about an example, if you could share, maybe of a nonprofit or a business that has utilized this just to help folks understand it. But I'm sure this is a terrible oversimplification, but if I could just state this. We live in an incredibly overly communicated world. We are inundated with stuff, and yet when we want others to do things, we think what we want them to do is the most important thing in the world. So we just talk and talk and talk, and the person listening is like, I'm busy. I can't do this. Is that a fair way to talk about or explain the world that we're in and how what you're doing with works and is so important?
- [19:58]
Don Miller
Yeah, well, the reason that what I do works so well is that the human brain is designed, in my opinion, by God, to survive. It's the number one job of the human brain, is to help you survive and thrive. And what I really mean by that is, is just what you think. The brain is designed to help you not get hit by a bus. So when you cross the street, you look both ways. You know, it's designed to avoid toxic people who could hurt you. It's designed to help you make money, save money, get better sleep, experience less anxiety, live longer, overcome addictions, experience better relationships, all that stuff. The human brain is obsessed with one thing, and that is Survival. Now survival is a very broad category. And so what I tell my clients is unless you associate your product or your service, whether you're a coach or whatever you are, unless you associate your product with the survival of the person that you're talking to, they will ignore you. They are designed to ignore you. So what you have to do is position your product as, as a, a tool that they can use to survive. And anything that anybody has ever spent money on is a tool that people can use to survive. And I realize that gets complicated. You know, when we're talking about survival, if we're talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's, you know, food, shelter, association with a tribe, all the way up to just sort of self actualization in a first world economy. And probably most of the people listening to us right now are in a first world economy. Survival is very complicated. It's about status, it's about association with a group of people. It's about being equipped, it's about identity, having the identity of somebody who is competent rather than incompetent. You know, there's all sorts of ways to survive. But I'm convinced that the only thing anybody has ever spent a dollar on, they spend a dollar on because they thought that thing would help them survive. So if you can come up with sound bites that help people realize how your product can help them survive and they don't have to think very hard to understand that connection, your sales are going to go up. So there are five specific sound bites that I think are very important to invite a customer into a story in which they use your product to save the day and to survive. And they happen to spell out the acronym peace. P is problem, E is empathy, A is answer, C is change, and E is end result. So, so let me break that down. You need a sound bite. And the most important sound bite you can come up with is your, your problem sound bite. A story is really about a character that is, is in peace. They're, they're at peace, they're stable and they fall into a hole and that hole destabilizes their peace. And then a guide comes along, throws a rope down the hole, pulls them out of the hole, and they are restabilized to peace. So they're at peace. Their piece is destabilized, and then they are restabilized. When you meet your customer, you're meeting somebody who has been destabilized. Their windows are dirty, so they need a window cleaner. Their marriage is on the rocks, so they need a therapist. Their Roof is leaking, so they need a new roof. Their, their dog is barking every time somebody knocks at the door. And so they need a dog trainer. You need to own a problem. If you want to build your business, if you want to build a coaching business, whatever you're doing, you need to own a problem. That is the number one thing you've got to do. And the way that you own a problem is you say something like, if you're having trouble clarifying your message so people pay attention, you should call me. So you literally, you start with the problem and then associate your product as the solution to that problem. So you need a problem sound bite. Then you need an empathy sound bite. You need to say, if you struggle with X, I feel for you. And that creates a bond, an emotional bond with the customer. And then the answer sound bite, which is, you should download my app or you should hire my window cleaners, or you should buy this electric vehicle or whatever it is. You want to associate your product as the solution to that problem. And then the C, the C is change. So it's problem, empathy, answer, change. If you do buy my products, you will be more competent or you will finally have clean windows or whatever that is. And then the end result is the climactic scene. So let me give you five sound bites that have been incredibly effective for a client. I have a client named you need a budget. They have a budgeting app in the app store. They make $50 million a year off this app. They have a cult like following. It is an app that, it helps you do a lot more than budget. It helps you manage your money and get good with money. Their problem sound bite was have you ever worried about money? So I would say everybody on the planet is worried about money. So now they have now qualified an audience of several billion people, which is a pretty good target market. And then the empathy they would say is, we know how that feels. Have you ever worried about money? We know how that feels. The answer is download the Ynab app. Don't overthink it. It's literally just use our product, download the Ynab app. That's the answer. And then the, the next C is change and we will help you get good with money. And then the end result is so that you never have to worry about money again. So let's put those five sound bites together and what you'll notice is you're inviting the customer into a story in which they are in a hole and you're helping them out. And you're also doing this In a few short sentences that take four seconds, five seconds. Have you ever worried about money? We know how it feels to worry about money. Download the Ynab app and we'll help you get good with money so you never have to worry about money again. And that's it. Now what you want to do is you want to take those five sentences and you want to put them everywhere. In fact, get good with money is now Ynab's tagline. It's right under their logo. If you go to their website, you will see the words that. They just did this a month ago, but you will already see the words that I just used everywhere. You want them above the header on your website, you want them at your trade show, on the backdrop, you want them. You're trying to get the public to memorize these talking points. And I would anticipate in the coming two to three years that they would go from 50 million to probably north of 75 and maybe even 100 million by only changing the words that they use to talk about their business. Because finally, people can understand in an instant why they should download that app. In fact, if I'm not worried about money, but my uncle's worried about money, I would say to him, oh, you're worried about money? You should download the Ynab app. They can come up with lead generators. Five ways to know that your boyfriend is bad with money. Then you download that app, that, that lead generator, and you tell your boyfriend, ladies, you gotta tell your boyfriend, download the app, because I'm not gonna marry you. Anybody who's bad with money, you gotta get good with money. Ynab, how she get good with money? You can see that the way that I'm talking about Ynab is now not confusing. And before, before we met, they were saying things, well, it's really not about budgeting, it's about spending. I don't know what that means. We're really not a finance app. We're more of a lifestyle app. I have no clue what that means. So if there's any sort of cognitive dissonance as you talk about your brand, you are losing sales, you are losing engagement. You need to simplify it so much. Let me give you an example. And I'm not a fan of American politics right now. I think both parties have some severe problems. But Jeb Bush wrote a book on immigration. Donald Trump had three words, build a wall, and the literal three word tagline beat the book. So most of us are over communicating and over complicating what it is. That we're trying to do. And because of that, we're losing the body politic. They are just not paying attention to us. We've got to simplify our message.
- [27:56]
Kevin Gentry
Well, fascinating. And I mean, make America great again. Very simple tagline, too, that nobody could tell me what.
- [28:02]
Don Miller
Jeb Bush's tagline. They couldn't talk. It was, by the way, Hillary. Hillary Clinton's tagline was I'm with her. What is that exactly? I'm with her like driving around in a minivan. I mean. What do you mean? I'm with her. I can't figure out what the offer is there.
- [28:17]
Kevin Gentry
I think Jeb Bush's was Jeb. Exclamation point. Which actually meant nothing either.
- [28:22]
Don Miller
Yeah, lowercase Jeff. Jeb's was Jeb can fix it, and Jeb can fix it is an elusive offer. We don't know what we get out of that. So you go to the polls and you can't figure out what I get. I get a great country or I get it being fixed. I mean, one creates cognitive dissonance and the other one is a clear offer. So you just cannot confuse people. It's very, very hard not to do it because you're so close to your products, your services, your ideas that you assume people understand what you're talking about, and they do not.
- [28:55]
Kevin Gentry
You're here.
- [28:56]
Don Miller
All right.
- [28:56]
Kevin Gentry
Well, thank you. All right, now I've got a big question that relates to this. So you said this. You know, you, you had this realization. How did, did you. Did you. I'm trying to help our audience and me understand. How did you step into the going big? Because it doesn't sound like you had a vision for this all your life or certain ambition. How did you go big? How did you take it big? How are you continuing to take it big? Are you just responding to the market that, that you've, that you've discovered? What. Help us understand that.
- [29:31]
Don Miller
Well, I mean, step one to, to going big and, and, and, and story brand becoming such a, you know, a, A decent company was that it worked. You know, we, we. I had a hunch that these frameworks would work. And Procter and Gamble called. They were the first call. And then Ford Lincoln called and the White House and, you know, on and on. And I would go in and kind of had a hunch that if we change the wording, we would get better engagement. And there just wasn't an instance where that wasn't the case. So I knew I had something. And at that point, it was about saying, okay, well, how do we? How do we multiply the impact? And there were two key things. One is I decided not to just sell myself. In other words, if you want to buy Donald Miller's brain for a day, it doesn't scale very well. So I turned it into a framework. Five sound bites that you would need. And those sound bites have an acronym. What that allowed me to do was train hundreds of other people to go in and teach it as well. And that scaled. I put that framework in a book Building a Story brand, and that scaled. So I, I, I had a really good idea that worked, and then I turned it into a repeatable framework, and then I distributed that framework through human beings and literature, and that those three things allowed me to go big.
- [31:01]
Kevin Gentry
Amazing. Well, you know, our friend Will Guidera, who had this, you know, challenge with respect. He. He was part of a great restaurant, but wanted to make it number one, so found this hole in the marketplace, this concept of unreasonable hospitality. And I mean, you know this better than I do, but he has stayed focused on this. We've had him as a guest on the Going Big podcast. And unreasonable hospitality, he. He owns that. And it. And it. He solves an element of a problem. He's got a way to deliver a solution to a lot of people.
- [31:30]
Don Miller
That's right. In fact, he did. He. We created the framework in which unreasonable hospitality can be duplicated in the conference room at Story Brand's headquarters. We spent about two days doing that with him. So it's a fantastic framework, by the way.
- [31:44]
Kevin Gentry
It is a fantastic framework. And that's another tremendous book, too, by the way. I recommend Strongly Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidera. All right, so switching gears a bit. Something that comes up so often in this podcast when I talk to leaders who've thought big, achieve big things, is the value of mentors. And I think you have the mentorship project. You have, of course, your own personal experience, not having had a father in your life. Tell us about how you think about mentors and the importance of them in today's world.
- [32:20]
Don Miller
Well, they're critical, and you can even see in stories and story structure, there's a hero character in the story, and then there's usually a character that I call the guide. Sometimes they're called the mentor or the wizard, but I call them the guide, like Skywalker or Obi Wan. Skywalker is the hero. Yoda is a guide. Katniss is a hero. Haymitch is a God, George Banks, and Mary Poppins is the hero. Mary Poppins is actually the guide. There's Almost always. Usually there's multiple guides, but like King George and the King Speech is the hero, and Daniel, the drama teacher, is the guide. There's sometimes multiple guides in a story, but usually there's a hero, and then the hero gets help. I just watched Rudy the other day on an airplane, and the janitor and one of the coaches, the assistant coaches, they both play the role of guide in Rudy's life. The guide is an interesting character. The guide is the hero is weak. They are in desperate need of help. They are ill equipped. They're usually unwilling to take action. They're afraid. The guide is the character that has been there usually and done that. Mr. Miyagi is a former champion. Yoda is a Jedi. Haymitch has won the Hunger Games. And so it is almost impossible for a human being to succeed in life without coming behind somebody who's already done it. The reason these guides exist inside of stories is because they exist in real life, and we long for them. Every mother and father is a guide. That's why a father abandoning their family is so devastating, because it's literally the guide leaving and not helping the hero figure out how to navigate the world. And so what we find in culture is that human beings only choose leaders who are guides. And I always say to people, never play the hero in the story. Always play the guide. If you are a leader, you cannot play the role of hero. You must play the role of guide. And by the way, why would you play the role of hero if you're a leader? They're weak, incompetent, and desperate need of help. You know, when. When Jeb says, Jeb can fix it, he's positioning himself as the hero in the story. When Hillary Clinton says, I'm with her, or, I'm sorry, she's with us. Sorry, I'm with her is what she said. She should have said, she's with us. She's positioning herself as the hero in the story. And when people smell that you think you're the hero of the story, they smell weakness. And I've never seen a leader position themselves as the hero in the story and get very many people to follow them. You've got to think more about how you can help the hero win your followers. How can I help them win? You'll notice that people who blow up online on their Instagram channel are usually. They usually have really great advice helping you achieve longevity or deal with a narcissist or have a better marriage or be a better parent. Those people blow up because we are always Looking for a guide and not a hero. It's interesting because people sometimes come to me and say, hey, can you help me tell my story? And I say, I can. But you've got to understand, if you want to be seen as a leader, telling your story is not going to be very helpful. What you want to do is invite the public into a story in which they use your wisdom to survive. And that's where you're going to get admiration and respect. So sometimes it feels like you're telling your story, but you're actually not. You're actually positioning yourself as a guide, helping the hero win.
- [35:54]
Kevin Gentry
No, this is really excellent, Don. Thank you. All right, so I reached out to a number of your friends and asked them to suggest some questions for today. And they all came back, actually, to several of them did to your book, Hero on a Mission, especially about the advice you give to how to think about writing your personal mission statement and even writing your eulogy. Tell us a little bit about that.
- [36:20]
Don Miller
Yeah, I did that exercise. Of course, Stephen Covey recommends that exercise. Michael Hyatt recommends the exercise. And there's another thinker who Stephen Covey got the idea from. I can't remember his name, but he really recommended writing your eulogy. Even if you're young, if you're 20 years old, write your eulogy as though it's being read at your funeral 50, 70 years from now. And I did that exercise, gosh, I mean, probably 15 to 20 years ago. And I would say I read it at least once a week. I've read it thousands of times, and it has been sort of a directional asset for me. I will read it and remember. Oh, that's right. I want to be remembered by my wife and our daughter as a good husband and a good father. Therefore, he actually says in my eulogy that Don was home by 5 o' clock and he rarely had his phone with him, you know, because I want it to instruct my behavior. It says that he was a good friend. So when somebody calls and they're in need, as soon as I get off this zoom call, I've got a friend coming over. And I took time for them. I think if I didn't read that document, I would say, well, I don't have to do that right now. I got some other stuff to do. But because I read my eulogy, I know this is what I want my life to have been about, and it shapes my behavior. So that's, again, I want to live a great story and part of the way to live a Great story is envision how you want this thing to end and then live accordingly. Live so that you get there.
- [37:57]
Kevin Gentry
Well, you're a great writer and you've got a lot of great advice. So you're performing a tremendous service to a lot of us. Another one, coach Builder, that was really helpful to me and the creation of my own business as well. Great. And I love that. So thank you. Thank you very, very much. All right, so some wrap up questions. If you could give advice to a younger version of Don Miller, let's say maybe 20 or so years ago when you were working on Blue Light jazz, what advice would you give to that younger version of yourself today?
- [38:36]
Don Miller
You know, I, I, I hesitate because I'm afraid if I gave myself advice, I would not make the mistakes that I made which have shaped me. But I'll, I'll venture and say the, the number one piece of advice is, hey, Don, no matter what you're going through, I promise you, when you are 54 years old, which is me today, you will look back and you will see that God had been with you the entire time. He had, he had never abandoned you. The pain was part of it. He was with you. He was going to use it to shape you and direct you. He was with you the entire time. And I see that so clearly, Kevin. I mean, so clearly. And in the moment, I didn't, I didn't see it. And I wondered, where the heck are you? And he was there. And I look back and I go, wow, boy, if that painful season hadn't happened, I wouldn't have learned this. I would give myself that advice. The second piece of advice I would give is this. In the seasons of my life, when I've accomplished something, the season after that, whether it was hitting the New York Times or growing a company or, or some sort of financial success or winning an award, the seasons that followed those mountain peak moments were almost always followed by a season of mild arrogance and pride. And if I could look back on my life, the seasons in which I spent in arrogance and pride were seasons of non growth. And the seasons I spent in humility, which by the way were all forced because I was getting my butt kicked or I was failing were all seasons of growth. And so I would say, don, more humility, less pride and you'll get there faster. And that, that is a, that is those two things. God had been with you the entire time and pride stalls, growth would be the two pieces of advice I would give myself. Wow.
- [40:46]
Kevin Gentry
Well, thank you. Well, I've got a closing Question. You may have already answered it, but I asked our friend Clay Broga for the final question, and he wanted to ask you this. And that is what's the most overlooked and underappreciated key to success? And so, for the benefit of the listeners of the Going Big podcast from around the world, wherever they're, whenever, wherever they're listening, what would that be?
- [41:10]
Don Miller
Well, I would say, I would say humility, but I already said that. And so I think I'll combine two factors. Humility with dreaming absurdly big. I mean, ridiculously big. There you can accomplish more than you can even imagine. And if you dream big, life is exciting, it's fun, you attract resources to yourself, you have great friends. Sometimes you're kind of alone because people think you're delusional. But if it's amazing to me how absurdly big, delusionally big I've dreamt, and those things tend to happen, and I'm now to the point where I don't know that big things are actually as hard as we thought they were. And so I would say to you, stay humble, but dream big.
- [42:10]
Kevin Gentry
That's terrific. You know, many times on this podcast we have quoted Daniel Burnham, the architect of the, you know, Chicago, the union Station, Washington, D.C. with that famous quote, make no small plans. They have no ability to stir men's soul. So that's awesome. Thank you, Don. Don, thank you for being here today. And ladies and gentlemen, I cannot recommend enough Don's books. Just check him out. Check more. Don, if people want to find out more about you beyond just reading the books, what should they do?
- [42:41]
Don Miller
Well, if you want me to help you write your five sound bites, go to storybrandyourbusiness.com we have a live workshop in Nashville. We limit it to a hundred people. We just launched it Yesterday and already 60 something seats are filled. So it's going to go. We will do another one. So hopefully there'll be a wait list or a second workshop by the time you listen to this podcast. But if you go to storybrandyourbusiness.com we're limiting it to 100 people because I want to be able to talk to everybody and there's coaches in the room who can help you. But I'd love to spend some time helping you invite people into a story.
- [43:15]
Kevin Gentry
Oh, that's fantastic. Well, you're, you're helping a lot of people solve some big problems. So thank you for that and thank you today for helping us all to think about going big. And thanks for all you do. Good to have you don't.
- [43:27]
Don Miller
Well, I really appreciate the conversation and thanks for having me on.
- [43:30]
Podcast Host Outro
Thanks for tuning in to the Going Big Podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling energized and ready to tackle your biggest goals. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes, YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps spread the word and it gets these inspiring stories out to more people. You can also find more content, resources and updates at our website, goingbigpodcast.com Remember, the only limits are the ones you don't challenge, the limits that you impose on yourself. Keep pushing, keep growing, and above all, keep going big. See you next time on the Going Big Podcast.
- [44:12]
Kevin Gentry
Well, thanks again for joining us for another episode of the Going Big Podcast. I hope you were inspired to to think big and to go big as a result of hearing these sorts of motivating conversations. And one more note about our sponsor for today, Zefie. Be sure to check out zefie.com register and find out how you can be one of more than 50,000 nonprofits that are taking advantage of this service that delivers 100% of an online donor's contribution directly to your important cause. No more fees. No more hassles. Check it out and and we'll look forward to seeing you again on the next episode of the Going Big Podcast.