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Travis Makes Money
SOLO | Make Money with Better Branding and Storytelling- Lessons from My Donald Miller interview
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You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis what is going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the show. Today it's just me, you and the mic and we are continuing along our series about what I've learned from people who've been on the show in the past. And so far on the series we've covered people like Dr. John DeLoney from the Ramsey crew, Jordan Harbinger, the well known popular podcaster Michelle Mace Curran, female fighter pilot, leader of the Thunderbirds, Randy Couture, UFC heavyweight champion and co star of the Expendables. We've talked about Michael Smoke, AKA at Higher Up Wellness, John Levy, who's a behavioral scientist Joe Gatto from Impractical Jokers. It's no shortage of really good stuff that we've talked about here on the show recently from past guests of the show as well as Travis Makes Friends. And on this episode of the show we are talking a little bit about the lessons and takeaways that I took from Donald Miller. Now if you don't know Donald Miller, he is sort of the branding guy. That's like his thing. Sorry to check my video real quick, make sure this is recording. Yeah, he's, he's the branding guy. He wrote a book called Building a Story Brand a few years back and it, it blew up, sold millions of copies now across the globe, translated a bunch of different languages. He's now a consultant for massive companies and brands. In fact, in our conversation we talked about a time where he consulted with the nsa, which was a pretty wild experience for him. So he's helped with government jobs and corporations and wrote his own novel and screenplay and things like that. Amazing writer, really interesting dude and knows a lot about branding in business. So on this episode, here's a few of my key takeaways from the time that I spent with Donald Miller. Number One. Confusion is the enemy. Simplicity is the game. Don has built his entire career around one insight. If people have to think too hard to understand you, you've already lost them. Cognitive dissonance is the enemy. The moment your message creates friction in someone's brain, they diseng. So he told this story about this aquarium company. I know there's companies for everything, turns out, but it was an aquarium company. Basically, they. They sell aquariums and they were trying to sell it to consumers rather than just selling it to, you know, hospitals and stuff like that. But they couldn't quite figure out how to break into that market. So they hire Donald Miller and his team. They come out and they come up with one branding slogan for the company. And this one slogan increased sales by 99%. 99%, and is a hundred million dollar company already. They're already doing a hundred million dollars in annual revenue before they started working with Don Miller. So then he came in, changed this one thing, and that essentially doubled their revenue because they were able to break into this market. And the one phrase that he came up with was, kids love aquariums. That's it. That was the whole thing. It was just simply removing all the noise. And because sometimes what happens is we as experts, we get too caught up in the awesome things about what it is that we do. So if you were selling aquariums, you could get caught up and like, oh, check out our amazing filtration system. And we have the best, most protective glass and it doesn't scratch and it's really visible and, you know, you start getting lost in all the sauce. When in reality, the consumer just cared about the one thing. Kids love, aquariums. That's all they cared about. They just wanted to have something that their kids could enjoy looking at. You know, the hospitals wanted to have it in their waiting room, so kids would just sit there and be still and look at something while they're waiting. So changing the one thing, focusing on simplicity, that is the game. There was not committee or rebrand. They just needed to stop confusing people. And that can be applied to every single person who's listening to this or watching this right now. And something that I've thought about a lot with even my podcasts. That's why when I start off the Travis Makes Money podcast, I start by saying, welcome back to Travis Makes Money Podcast, where it's our mission to help you make more money. Great. Travis Makes Friends podcast. Welcome back to the Travis Makes Friends podcast, where it's our mission to help you build better friendships. That's it. Very simple. Like, there's no if, ands or buts about it. You don't come into the Travis Makes Money podcast and go like, I wonder what this show's about? No, it's called Travis Makes Money. And the first line out of the gate on every episode is, welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast. Where's our mission to help you make more money? Very simple, very clear. Everybody understands what that means. We're on a mission to help you make more money. So stop confusing people, simplify the message and think about it from the perspective of somebody who knows absolutely nothing about what it is that you do. And I get it, I get it. You're excited. You're excited about all the cool stuff that you're rolling out. And you know, it took, it took 18 months of R and D to come up with this unique filtration system for this new water filter thing, whatever. But ultimately the customer doesn't care. Most customers don't care anyway. You know, you might be dealing with an engineer or something like that, in which case they might care. But most customers don't care. They don't. They just want to know, am I going to drink clean water? So stop confusing people. Become more simple. Confusion is the enemy. Number two. AI is a dirty rough draft machine, not a replacement for genius. Donald was clear eyed about this. AI is as is, good at throwing up the walls, at giving you structure. Paints them fast, but none of the trim is done. The carpet isn't laid, the details, which is all, which is where basically all the craf of writing actually lives. That still requires a human with taste, at least at this point. So if you don't know the difference between a good draft and a bad1, then AI is just going to make you look bad. And we were talking about this, by the way, mostly in a writing context because obviously Don Miller's a prolific author and he was a screenwriter before this and wrote a novel and things like that. So he's a, he's, he's an author really through and through, who happened to get into branding because he wrote a book about branding and then that blew up and, and, and turned him into the branding guy. But at his core he's an author and that's how he would identify himself. So we're talking about AI in terms of like, generative and what it means for, for writing. So if you're somebody who just depends on AI because you don't know the difference between what's good and what's bad, and you're just hoping that it's going to be good, then it's probably just going to embarrass you. Honestly, the lazy and hardworking are still going to be obvious. Even if you're using AI the tool amplifies your judgment. It does not replace good judgment. And that's really, I think that's really
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the key things and Naval talks about this all the time. Naval Rafikan talks about this all the time where he says you basically get paid for your judgment, your ability to make decisions. And even before AI existed, the best entrepreneurs were already pulling themselves out of every single part of the business, minus judgment, just making good calls, making good decisions, making fast decisions, making smart decisions, weighing pros and cons, weighing strengths, weaknesses and opportunities and threats. So if you don't have that as a skill set, then AI is simply a tool that helps you put out more garbage. It's not going to help improve the stuff that you're working on unless you get good at it. So his, his core takeaway there was that AI is just going to amplify who, who's lazy and who's hard working because people who are hardworking are obviously going to have 10 times the output. With something like AI, the people who are lazy are just going to have 10 times the output and then it's going to be bad. So you still, you still got to work hard. Spoiler alert. Number three. Delusional optimism is a feature, not a bug. I loved this one because something that's it's been a, it's been a recurring theme recently for me is, is going to, this is talking about this idea of delusional optimism. And he said it straight. One out of every seven things that he builds actually works. One out of seven. And he's a pretty successful dude, so he doesn't, he doesn't remember the failures. He just keeps taking swings. He keeps stepping up into the batter's box and getting pitched at. He called this delusional opt optimism. And he stands by the belief that something's going to work is what generates the activity that eventually will make something work. And Pete Carroll told him that he believed he was going to win every single game, every practice, every play. He told him that he was going to. That he believed at his core that every single game that he coached, he was going to win. And Don's version of that mindset is what let him build something that sold over a million copies of a non fiction book about narrative structure, which is a wild thing to sell that many copies about. So you've gotta, you got to believe before the evidence shows up. And that delusional belief is what allows you to then take the action. It's not enough to have the, the delusional belief. Right? This isn't about BS Manifestation, okay? The reason manifestation works for people that it works for is because the, the manifestation, the delusional optimism, the belief in the thing is what propels them into relentless action against the belief. Okay? It's not just the belief. There has to be followed up by action, but you've got to believe before the evidence shows up. So delusional optimism is a feature, not a bug. Number four, position yourself as the guide, not the hero, and don't apologize for your authority. So this is a part of the conversation that hit me personally because he made the case using the King's Speech and Mary Poppins, some of these epic tales that the guide in the story never explains themselves or says they're figuring it out. The moment the guide starts doubting themselves out loud, the audience loses confidence in the whole story. So the guide, like Mary, Mary Poppins, or the guide in, you know, the Karate kid, which is Mr. Miyagi, the guide is the, is the rock. And then there's the hero of the story who experiences a transformation that's being brought on by the guide. So if you're writing a book, you're running a, running a business, you're hosting a show, you are the guide. Own it. Imposter syndrome is not humility. It's Just noise that serves nobody, least of all you. So don't give in to the imposter syndrome. Buy into the delusional optimism and take action against that belief. And then if you. The big thing I think here to focus on is, especially in your business, and especially if you're like an info business, like coaching or you're an author or you're a podcaster or something like that, you can tend. A lot of people tend to put themselves as the hero of the story. And that is what he was saying is like, that is the opposite of how you should be doing things. You should position yourself as the guide in the story and the customer, the ideal customer profile. That is the hero of the story. That is the person that's going to experience the change along the way. That's the person who has a goal in mind and then their searching for the outcome and they don't know exactly how it's going to happen. And usually there's an internal struggle that they're dealing with as well as an external struggle that they're dealing with. And then the, and then the story over time is going to take place to have this core internal change which provides this core external change. They are the hero. You are not the hero of the story. You are the guide. So stop, stop putting yourself out there as the hero, as the God of the story. You are not the hero, you are not the, the, the. The person that you should be focusing on. It's all about the. The end. Use the client that is the hero of the story. Number five. Pixar's secret was spending two years on structure before writing a single line of dialogue. So he brought this up when we were talking about what makes stories actually work. And I, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Two years of just mapping what happens then. What happens then what happens then? What happens after that? No dialogue, no polish, just the story architecture. And by the time they wrote a single word, the story already knew where it was going. And that's why the emotional payoffs land so hard. You can't manufacture the I can't believe he's back moment in the third act if you didn't plan it right. In act one, structure isn't the boring part. It is everything. It's what makes it work. Which is why Pixar has been able to put out so many bangers over the years and do so well as an animation studio when a lot of other people were struggling in that space is because they focus that much on just. I Think this particular part of the conversation, I believe we're talking about the Incredibles by itself, because it was a mass of undertaking a huge project. Pixar was not in a good position. They spent a ton of money on this project and for two years all they did was work on the story structure itself. So do not underestimate the power of story and the architecture of the story, because it is everything. So confusion's the enemy. Make sure you simplify. Everything is one of the core lessons. AI is a dirty rough draft machine, not a replacement for genius. It's just going to amplify whether you're good or bad at it. Delusional optimism is a feature, not a bug. Position yourself as the guy guide, not the hero, and then spend more time on the structure of the story before you release any. Before you start working on all the intricate details of the story, because that's what's most important anyway. So if you have not read Building a Story Brand, you owe, in your business owner especially, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of that book. It is, you know, sold over a million copies globally for a reason. It's been translated into a ton of different languages for a reason. It's because it's that good. So I highly recommend picking up a copy of that. Also, he has his own, his own AI platform that helps you build your own story structure into your business. Really, really good stuff from Donald Miller. So go check out more of the things that he's working on. And that's it for this episode of the show. Catch you guys on the next one. Peace out.