<ul><li>The customer is the hero, not your brand.</li><li>Companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but customers buy solutions to internal problems.</li><li>Customers aren’t looking for another hero; they’re looking for a guide.</li><li>Customers trust a guide who has a plan.</li><li>Customers do not take action unless they are challenged to take action.</li><li>Every human being is trying to avoid a tragic ending.</li><li>Never assume people understand how your brand can change their lives. Tell them.</li></ul>

Key Takeaways From The Book

If we haven’t clarified our message, our customers won’t listen.The more simple and predictable the communication, the easier it is for the brain to digest.There are two critical mistakes brands make when talking about their products and services:<ul><li>They fail to focus on the aspects of their offer that will help people survive and thrive; and</li><li>They cause their customers to burn too many calories in an effort to understand their offer.</li></ul>Make your company’s message about something that helps the customer survive and do so in such a way that they can understand it without burning too many calories.

The Key to Being Seen, Heard, and Understood

A CHARACTER who wants something encounters a PROBLEM before they can get it. At the peak of their despair, a GUIDE steps into their lives, gives them a PLAN, and CALLS THEM TO ACTION. That action helps them avoid FAILURE and ends in a SUCCESS.We always know:<ul><li>What does the hero want?</li><li>Who or what is opposing the hero getting what she wants?</li><li>What will the hero’s life look like if she does (or does not) get what she wants?</li></ul>Potential customers must be able to answer the following:<ul><li>What do you offer?</li><li>How will it make my life better?</li><li>What do I need to do to buy it?</li></ul>

The Secret Weapon That Will Grow Your Business: The Hero's Story

When we identify something our customer wants and communicate it simply, the story we are inviting them into is given definition and direction.In story terms, identifying a potential desire for your customer opens what’s sometimes called a story gap. The idea is that you place a gap between a character and what they want.When we fail to define something our customer wants, we fail to open a story gap. Defining something our customer wants and featuring it in our marketing materials will open a story gap.

Identifying And Defining The Story Gap

As you create a BrandScript for your overall brand, focus on one simple desire and then, as you create campaigns for each division and maybe even each product, you can identify more things your customer wants in the subplots of your overall brand.Survival simply means we have the economic and social resources to eat, drink, reproduce, and fend off foes.Examples:<ul><li>Conserving financial resources;           </li><li>Conserving time;</li><li>Building social networks;</li><li>Gaining status;</li><li>Accumulating resources;</li><li>The innate desire to be generous; and</li><li>The desire for meaning.</li></ul>

Creating A Brandscript

The villain is the number one device storytellers use to give conflict a clear point of focus.The villain doesn’t have to be a person, but without question it should have personified characteristics.The villain should be:<ul><li>A root source;</li><li>Relatable;</li><li>Singular; and</li><li>Real.</li></ul>

The Villain

What is the chief source of conflict that your products and services defeat? Talk about this villain. The more you talk about the villain, the more people will want a tool to help them defeat the villain.In a story, a villain initiates an external problem that causes the character to experience an internal frustration that is, quite simply, philosophically wrong.Companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but people buy solutions to internal problems.

Talk About The Villain

The external problems we solve are causing frustrations in people’s lives and, just like in a story, it’s those frustrations that are motivating them to call you.The only reason our customers buy from us is that the external problem we solve is frustrating them in some way. If we can identify that frustration, put it into words, and offer to resolve it along with the original external problem, something special happens. We bond with our customers because we’ve positioned ourselves more deeply into their narrative.

Solving The External Problem

The philosophical problem in a story is about the question why.A philosophical problem can best be talked about using terms like ought and shouldn’t.People want to be involved in a story that is larger than themselves.If you want to grow your business, you need to position your products as the resolution to an external, internal, and philosophical problem and frame the “Buy Now” button as the action a customer must take to create closure in their story.

The Philosophical Problem

<ul><li>Always position your customer as the hero and your brand as the guide. Always. If you don’t, you will die.</li><li>The day we stop losing sleep over the success of our business and start losing sleep over the success of our customers is the day our business will start growing again.</li><li>The two things a brand must communicate to position itself as the guide are empathy and authority.</li><li>The three things every human being wants most are to be seen, heard, and understood. This is the essence of empathy.</li></ul>

The Customer's Guide

When looking for a guide, a hero trusts somebody who knows what they’re doing. The guide doesn’t have to be perfect, but the guide needs to have serious experience helping other heroes win the day.There are four ways to add authority to your marketing.     <ul><li>Testimonials;</li><li>Statistics;</li><li>Awards; and</li><li>Logos.</li></ul>

Adding Credibility And Authority

A process plan describes the steps a customer needs to take to buy our product, or the steps the customer needs to take to use our product after they buy it, or a mixture of both.A post-purchase process plan is best used when a customer might have problems imagining how they would use our product after they buy it.An agreement plan is a list of agreements you make with your customers to help them overcome their fear of doing business with you.

Plans To Encourage Customers To Do Business With Your Brand

There are two kinds of calls to action:<ul><li>Direct calls to action; and</li><li>Transitional calls to action.</li></ul>A direct call to action is something that leads to a sale, or at least is the first step down a path that leads to a sale.Transitional calls to action, however, contain less risk and usually offer a customer something for free. Transitional calls to action can be used to ‘on-ramp’ potential customers to an eventual purchase.A good transitional call to action can do three powerful things for your brand:      <ul><li>Stake a claim to your territory;</li><li>Create reciprocity; and</li><li>Position yourself as the guide.</li></ul>

The Call To Action

Prospect Theory: People are more likely to be dissatisfied with a loss than they are satisfied with a gain. In certain situations, people are two to three times more motivated to make a change to avoid a loss than they are to achieve a gain.

Helping Customers Avoiding Failure

<ul><li>To implement “fear appeal” in your marketing, you need to inform the reader that they are vulnerable to a threat. </li><li>Then, you need to inform the reader know that since they’re vulnerable, they need to take action to reduce their vulnerability. </li><li>Next, you need to inform them about a specific call to action that protects them from the risk. </li><li>Lastly, you need to challenge people to take this specific action.</li></ul>

The Fear Appeal

When people are either fearful or unafraid, little attitude or behaviour change results.High levels of fear are so strong that individuals block them out; low levels are too weak to produce the desired effect.Messages containing moderate amounts of fear-rousing content are most effective in producing attitudinal and/or behaviour change.

The Goldilocks Approach To Fear

Always remember, people want to be taken somewhere.By foreshadowing a potential successful ending to a story, leaders captivate the imaginations of their audiences.We must tell our customers what their lives will look like after they buy our products, or they will have no motivation to do so.Brainstorm what your customer’s life will look like externally if their problem is resolved, then think about how that resolution will make them feel, and then consider why the resolution to their problem has made the world a more just place to live in.

Time For Success

The three dominant ways storytellers end a story is by allowing the hero to:    <ul><li>Win some sort of power or position;       </li><li>Be unified with somebody or something that makes them whole; and  </li><li>Experience some kind of self-realization that also makes them whole.</li></ul>Human beings are looking for resolutions to their external, internal, and philosophical problems, and they can achieve this through, among other things, status, self-realization, self-acceptance, and transcendence. If our products can help people achieve these things, we should make this a core aspect of our brand promise.

The Three Story Endings

Brands that participate in the identity transformation of their customers create passionate brand evangelists.A few important questions we have to ask ourselves when we’re representing our brand are:<ul><li>Who does our customer want to become?</li><li>What kind of person do they want to be?</li><li>What is their aspirational identity?</li></ul>The best way to identify an aspirational identity that our customers may be attracted to is to consider how they want their friends to talk about them.A hero needs somebody else to step into the story to tell them they’re different, they’re better. That is the whole work of a brand.

Creating Patrons

Building a StoryBrand is about making your customer the hero of a story.

More than half-a-million business leaders have discovered the power of the StoryBrand Framework, created by New York Times best-selling author and marketing expert Donald Miller. And they are making millions. If you use the wrong words to talk about your product, nobody will buy it. Marketers and business owners struggle to effectively connect with their customers, costing them and their companies millions in lost revenue. In a world filled with constant, on-demand distractions, it has become near-impossible for business owners to effectively cut through the noise to reach their customers, something Donald Miller knows first-hand. In this book, he shares the proven system he has created to help you engage and truly influence customers. The StoryBrand process is a proven solution to the struggle business leaders face when talking about their companies. Without a clear, distinct message, customers will not understand what you can do for them and are unwilling to engage, causing you to lose potential sales, opportunities for customer engagement, and much more. In Building a StoryBrand, Donald Miller teaches marketers and business owners to use the seven universal elements of powerful stories to dramatically improve how they connect with customers and grow their businesses. His proven process has helped thousands of companies engage with their existing customers, giving them the ultimate competitive advantage. Building a StoryBrand does this by teaching you: The seven universal story points all humans respond to; The real reason customers make purchases; How to simplify a brand message so people understand it; and How to create the most effective messaging for websites, brochures, and social media. Whether you are the marketing director of a multibillion-dollar company, the owner of a small business, a politician running for office, or the lead singer of a rock band, Building a StoryBrand will forever transform the way you talk about who you are, what you do, and the unique value you bring to your customers.

Stashed ideas

Building a StoryBrand

... but the past two years have prompted many people to ask, “Is my job really worth it?” <ul><li>Some have titled this era—one in which employees are unwilling to compromise personal interests for organizational gain—as the Age of Anti-Ambition. </li><li>Whereas ambition used to be measured in promotions and salary raises, today it’s a marker of how much passion or personal pride employees bring to their roles. </li><li>The pandemic prompted many of us to reconsider what matters most in life and how a career can contribute to overall well-being. Levels of ambition have changed accordingly.</li></ul>

Workplace dissatisfaction is nothing new

<ul><li>The rise and fall of ambition will have a significant impact on innovation.</li><li>As change accelerates and increasingly complex issues emerge, great leaders will rise to the top of their organizations.</li><li>Tomorrow's workplace is one of personalization driven by leaders who can keep broader business priorities on track while catering to individual needs. Likewise, promotions into leadership roles will need to come on different terms.</li><li>Being able to identify how one's work contributes to something bigger makes it easier to roll out of bed with enough motivation to last through the day.</li></ul>

What an ambition reset means for the workplace

<ul><li>Effective leaders balance "have to" priorities with "want to" projects that keep employees engaged.</li><li>Going the extra mile for others encourages them to do the same for you.</li><li>Creating space for valued employees to try new things can be logistically challenging.</li><li>The goal in an ambition reset economy should be to create a culture that fosters company-wide collaboration and empowerment.</li></ul>

Meeting the ambition reset challenge

A director of change management at Kotter explains how to navigate the balance between what teams “have to” do with what they “want to” do to keep them engaged.


How leaders can manage employees through an ‘ambition reset’

While the underlying components of the formula for executive presence(credibility + ease/ego) are universal, a strong or effective executive presence might look different from one individual, situation, or culture to the next. 
People should think of the pieces that make up these components as dials on an instrument panel. Depending on the circumstance, you can turn some dials up and others down.

Executive Presence

Credibility has one important piece: expertise in your role.No level of executive presence can compensate for a lack of ability. 
You need to be able to communicate your credibility to others. So once you’re sure you know your stuff, how can you work to better convey that?
<ul>
<li>Avoid a monotone delivery. </li>
<li>Avoid using too many filler words—“er,” “um,” “uh”—which can be distracting from the message you’re trying to convey.</li>
<li>Make sure you aren’t fidgeting or using “props” in a meeting.</li>
</ul>

Credibility

As with credibility, ease also has several foundational elements. These include making sure you are eating and sleeping well, having social support, and are making time for movement in your day. These things will help build your capacity for resilience under stress.
Other ways to convey ease include connecting with those you work with, avoiding emotional outbursts, listening well, maintaining eye contact, as well as authenticity, which signals “a sense of self-assurance.”

Ease

With ego, the focus is on true confidence and true humility.
With ego being the denominator in the executive-presence formula, you don’t want to have a minuscule ego, nor do you want an oversized one, since both a negative number and a giant number will mean an erosion of the credibility and ease that you’ve worked to convey.
Tips:
<ul>
<li>Stop thinking about yourself too much.</li>
<li>A focus on doing good work is what will ultimately determine how your peers or your boss or your clients think of you.</li>
</ul>

A professor and executive coach unpacks this seemingly elusive trait.

Executive Presence Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All. Here’s How to Develop Yours.

“Flexibility” is now rivaled in prominence only by the novel work model it is so often used to describe: hybrid work. They have taken over the way we speak about the future of work and represent new ways of thinking about the further integration of work and life.Many different interpretations of flexibility are beginning to arise. But none of these definitions is exactly what employees mean when they say they want flexibility. What it seems they really want is autonomy. Within the context of hybrid work, this means having the ability to be the primary decision-maker of where and when they do their work.

Flexibility And Hybrid Work

In short, autonomy is an indispensable component of motivation and a key driver of performance and well-being.

Why Give Employees Autonomy?

<ul>
<li>Low autonomy, low flexibility: I am mandated to be in the office full time.</li>
<li>Low autonomy, medium flexibility: I work from both the home and the office, but my organization tells me which days to be in which place.</li>
<li>Medium autonomy, medium flexibility: I can work from multiple locations, but with a minimum number of days required in the office each week.</li>
<li>Medium autonomy, high flexibility: I am mandated to work remotely full time but can choose where I want to work.</li>
<li>High autonomy, high flexibility: I can work wherever, whenever, with full access to my organization’s office space.</li>
</ul>

The Relationship Between Autonomy and Flexibility

<ul><li>Establish principles, not policies. Hybrid strategies containing policy-driven mandates on where and when to work are likely to be rejected by employees based on their inherent restriction to autonomy. </li><li>Invest in competence and relatedness. Competence refers to an individual’s ability to complete their tasks through mastery of relevant skills. Relatedness refers to our sense of belonging and social cohesiveness with others.</li><li>Give employees the tools they need to work autonomously from anywhere. A specific location is simply no longer a prerequisite to working effectively or building a company culture: what’s more important is getting the right tools and technologies and using them effectively.</li></ul>

Steps to Enabling Autonomy in Hybrid Work

People want to make their own decisions about when and where they work, according to survey data.

Forget Flexibility. Your Employees Want Autonomy.

Netflix have changed how customers watch movies and TV shows. This technology has taken a different point of view that changed what customers watch, not just how they watch.
The company collected vast amounts of data on the viewing habits of its subscribers. The collected data creates a rich social system that influences what members watch, based on which shows they&#39;ve liked in the past and what other subscribers see and like.

Technology is in service of strategy

... you should be willing to disrupt yourself.
Netflix reshaped the logic of the entire industry. But the most important thing is how the company transformed itself to fulfil its mission. Initially, it mailed DVDs and then moved to broadcast movies and TV shows digitally. Today, Netflix is ​​better known as a content creator. 
Netflix has incurred external scepticism in every strategic move and required an internal rethinking of what worked before.

If you aim to disrupt an industry

Netflix has invented a range of practices designed to connect the company's goals in the marketplace with how it organizes the workplace. The company has a detailed statement of its principles, policies, and practices. In the manifesto, it states that "You say what you think, when it's in the best interest of Netflix, even if it is uncomfortable. You are willing to be critical of the status quo."

Strategy is culture. Culture is strategy.

The three big strategy lessons from the company’s success.

Everything I Know About Business I Learned from Netflix

The corridor principle experiment was conducted in a study done by Robert Ronstadt back in the 1980s. He explained the principle as the mere act of starting a venture in which enables entrepreneurs to see other opportunities they could neither see nor take advantage of until they had started their initial venture. 
The difference between those who succeeded in the entrepreneurial field was because they took the chance to launch themselves even without the guarantee of success.

The Corridor Principle

"Successful people start before they are even ready".

When we have the opportunity to take action towards our goals and expand our comfort zone in order to gain the knowledge necessary for us to pull through, we'll be able to improve drastically. 
What we accomplish in our life always begins with our willingness to face the uncertainty of everything and be able to move through confidently towards our goal. So keep in mind that time and opportunity don't wait for us, we must take a leap of faith and take action for ourselves.

The Corridor Principle in Everyday Life

Want to learn the difference between success and failure? Read this article to learn more about the Corridor Principle and how you can use it.

Career

The Corridor Principle: Why Some People Succeed—And Others Don’t

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase."

"Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try."

"The beginning is the most important part of the work."

"Start by doing what’s necessary, then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

"Beginning with audacity is a very great part of the art of painting."

"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success."

"We don't accomplish anything in this world alone ... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads form one to another that creates something."

"The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

"No matter how hard the past is, you can always begin again."

"The right way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."

"Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can."

Everyone from MLK to Joan of Arc can help light your path to a fresh start.

Quotes on New Beginnings From History's Greatest Leaders

Most people would want to grow in an organization, and strong leadership is essential for both professional and personal growth. Yet many capable team workers are reluctant to move towards a leadership role even when they have an opportunity.
The reason is the various perceived risks that make people not take up leadership roles even when they are deserving and capable.

Capable People Unwilling To Lead

<ol>
<li>Interpersonal Risk: When people are reluctant to lead due to spoiling a friendship or hurting a fellow workers feelings.</li>
<li>Image Risk: People don’t want to come across as a ‘Mr Know It All’ or someone aggressive in front of all the team members.</li>
<li>Risk Of Getting Blamed: Being a leader means that if the team fails, the person in charge takes all the blame. This loss aversion makes many shun a leadership opportunity.</li>
</ol>

Leadership: Three Kinds of Risk

<ol>
<li>Be extra supportive of the fragile, risk-sensitive colleagues. Seek their input and publicly praise them for their team efforts.</li>
<li>Relationship conflicts, differences of opinions, values or personality issues and the perception that comes with it needs to be managed before they escalate.</li>
<li>Make the would-be leaders take up small, low-stakes opportunities and let them take baby steps towards higher-visibility roles once they gain confidence and build a reputation.</li>
</ol>

Mitigating Risk: Proactive Steps For Managers

A manager can identify a suitable and potentially capable employee by assessing his working style and provide them with opportunities for leading that may have a higher chance of success.
This also builds confidence while honing their leadership skills.

Identifying Potential Leaders: Tips For Managers

Three perceived risks that hold them back, according to research.

Why Capable People Are Reluctant to Lead

<ul><li>Clarify expectations.&nbsp;Bad assumptions multiply when there is less regular conversation.</li><li>Don't worry about how the team spends their time and focus on results.</li><li>Make time to build relationships.&nbsp;</li><li>Grant trust and expect the best.</li><li>Be patient. Some things will take more time when you aren't in close proximity.</li><li>Create actionable meetings:&nbsp;Schedule short meetings with clear agendas. </li><li>Take advantage of technology.&nbsp;</li></ul>

7 key behaviors  for virtual leaders

For many of us, leading a virtual team is something that is thrust upon us with little preparation. Whether it's a leading a project or an existing team, the onus is suddenly on us to get the work done. It's generally expected that we know what we're doing.

Key skills for virtual leaders

<ul><li>Clarify commitments in writing at the end of every meeting.</li><li>Give regular feedback on progress and completion with team members.</li><li>Clearly state deliverables.</li><li>Be punctual.</li><li>Stay the course - credibility is a marathon, not a sprint.</li><li>Own your mistakes. It is as important as how you model your successes.</li><li>Handoff smoothly and completely.</li></ul>

7 Tips to Create accountability

Great businesses are built on teams that take full ownership of individual responsibilities. Too many businesses let people slide by partially doing things, and accepting excuses for delays and mistakes that could have been avoided. A culture of accountability is one of the most valuable institutional habits that your business can form, and for better or worse, it starts with you.

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Thea F.
@theaf

Building a StoryBrand

How leaders can manage employees through an ‘ambition reset’

Executive Presence Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All. Here’s How to Develop Yours.

Forget Flexibility. Your Employees Want Autonomy.

Everything I Know About Business I Learned from Netflix

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Thea F.@theaf

Building a StoryBrand

How leaders can manage employees through an ‘ambition reset’

Executive Presence Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All. Here’s How to Develop Yours.

Forget Flexibility. Your Employees Want Autonomy.

Everything I Know About Business I Learned from Netflix

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Thea F.
@theaf