#511: How to Avoid Fauxthenticity With Your Brand Story Using the 50% Rule

#511: How to Avoid Fauxthenticity With Your Brand Story Using the 50% Rule

You’ve heard about the power of being authentic if you want to be successful in business.

But you hear it so much it almost sounds inauthentic. A trending buzzword. A trite insight.

So what if you approached authenticity in a different way?

Erin Hatzikostas joins us today to share how to bring the actual real you to the world with her 50% rule.

She is the founder of b Authentic, a global keynote speaker, and a former Corporate CEO turned professional pot-stirrer, and has written two best-selling books including The 50% Rule, which we will explore today.

Erin is the co-host of “b Cause Work Doesn’t Have to Suck” podcast.

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#510: How to Use Your Growth Mindset to Craft and Share a Lucrative Brand Story

#510: How to Use Your Growth Mindset to Craft and Share a Lucrative Brand Story

Famous American Author, Kurt Vonnegut, said that every story is about a man getting in a hole and getting out.

“It needn’t be about a man and it needn’t be about a hole. People LOVE that story,” he proclaimed at the beginning of his entertaining presentation, “The Shapes of Stories.”

But as you may know, getting out of a hole can take patience, perseverance, and grit.

Shane McLaughlin believes there is one more ingredient for success when life throws you blows: a healthy, positive mindset.

He should know.

Shane and his team of eight content creators at Intuit just got replaced by AI even though they built self-help experiences that realized millions of dollars in efficiency for the company.

But that hasn’t shaken his optimistic mindset. It’s supercharged it.

Shane is a communications and content strategist with a proven track record at several Fortune 500 companies.

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#509: How to Make Your Brand Story Stand Out With Deliberate Disruption

#509: How to Make Your Brand Story Standout With Deliberate Disruption

I just heard a great insight about the disruptive force of AI in marketing from John Jantcsh, founder of Duct Tape Marketing.

We were on a call last week talking about how we’re leveraging AI to disrupt the brand story-creation process.

The problem we’re solving with our StoryCycle Genie™ is this: It takes months of misery, toil and trouble to craft a compelling brand story strategy (if you’re lucky).

Solution: Now you can do it in minutes. At a fraction of the cost.

You can iterate real-time in the Genie™ to define and refine your story.

And it produces content instantly in the tone, voice and positioning of your brand.

Just upload your website URL and some marketing materials (optional), and the Genie reveals how you’re showing up in the world.

The StoryCycle Genie™ follows our Story Cycle System™ and produces your brand story narrative in about two minutes.

Two minutes!

It gets you 80 to 90 percent there with your brand narrative strategy. Then you bring 100 percent of your creative energy to perfect the last 10 to 20 percent of your brand story (check my math).

John said that it’s “IQ vs EQ.”

We can’t compete with the intellectual quotient of AI, but it can’t outperform the emotional quotient humans bring to communication. At least not yet.

We can’t compete with the intellectual quotient of AI, but it can’t outperform the emotional quotient humans bring to communication. At least not yet.

So let’s use AI to work smarter, not harder.

If Bernadette McClellan had been on our call, I know she would have agreed.

Bernadette doesn’t just embrace disruption. She causes it.

Founder of the Deliberate Disruption Academy, she wrote SHIFT AND DISRUPT: Stop Selling Widgets. Start Selling Wisdom.

The idea is that you can let developments like AI disrupt you, or you can leverage it to be the disruptive force that propels your growth and that of your clients.

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#508: How to Apply Mediocrity Repellant to Your Brand Storytelling

#508: How to Apply Mediocrity Repellant to Your Brand Storytelling

Ever wonder what it takes to survive the insane career of advertising?

Cameron Day, author of the acclaimed “Advertising Survival Guide” trilogy, is here to show you how.

Cameron brings four decades of experience from the creative trenches, where he’s developed crazy disruptive campaigns that have transformed brands.

From the profound influence of his father’s wisdom – who was Guy Day, co-founder of the iconic ad agency Chiat Day – to navigating ageism in a youth-obsessed industry, to harnessing AI as a creative superpower—Cameron shares the kind of insights you can only gain from being a creative gladiator in a soul-crushing coliseum.

From his mediocrity-repelling mind, he’ll inspire you to find those fundamental human truths that make advertising magic happen and your career extraordinary.

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#507: How to Quickly Turn Minutiae into Marketing Momentum For Rapid Growth

#507: How to Quickly Turn Minutiae into Marketing Momentum For Rapid Growth

Have you ever taken one week to keep track of every critical *To-Do* on your sales and marketing plate?

Regardless of the size of the task and the effort they command, they’re important to the success of your revenue growth.

But they can be exhausting. They take your time, your attention, and can drain you of the energy you need for more creative and productive pursuits.

Our guest today, Mike Allton, has created an AI-powered Chief of Staff that you can implement to quickly turn the minutiae that are strangling your growth into momentum to build your brand and business.

Mike encourages you to start with a small pilot program to learn what AI can do to increase the efficiency of your company.

An example would be to use our new StoryCycle Genie™ to reframe and refine your brand story in minutes, not months.

Unbeknownst to Mike, I fed the Genie his The AI Hat brand using his URL, and it revealed his story: the gaps, the missed opportunities to connect with prospects and customers, and inspiration for fresh ways to think about a more clear, concise and compelling narrative.

He had me on his AI Hat podcast over the weekend where we revealed each of his brand story elements the StoryCycle Genie™ conjured.

This is just one example of how you can join the Fourth Industrial Revolution of AI to spend 80% less time on repetitive tasks and 100% of your time on building your brand and growing your revenue.

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#506: How to Tell Your Startup Lifecycle Story to Sell Investors & Customers on Your Brand

#506: How to Tell Your Startup Lifecycle Story to Sell Investors & Customers on Your Brand

We’re in frantic startup mode with our new StoryCycle Genie™.

Now you can refine your brand story in minutes, not months, as our AI Agent whisks you through our proven Story Cycle System™ which has grown brands by 600 percent.

Perhaps you’re in startup mode, tool.

Maybe you’re launching a product. Introducing a service. Or trying to get your people to buy into a new initiative within your organization.

How you craft your startup story to be clear, concise and compelling is critical to your success.

That’s why you’ll enjoy our guest this week who has conjured startup-to-exit magic for years, like selling one of his companies to eBay for north of $900 million dollars.

Gregory Shepard is the founder of StartupScience.io and author of the new book, The Startup Lifecycle: The Definitive Guide to Building a Startup from Idea to Exit.

You’ll learn the crucial steps in telling your startup story to attract investors and customers.

Or to get your people to buy into your new initiative.

I even put Gregory’s brand through our new StoryCycle Genie™.

You’ll learn from the advice he gave me on our startup.

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#505: How Audacious of a Brand Storyteller Are You?

#505: How Audacious of a Brand Storyteller Are You?

What’s one of the most audacious marketing stunts you’ve pulled for your brand?

In 1983, I interned at The Fearey Group public relations firm in Seattle, WA.

One of my jobs was to promote the Seattle Symphony Golf Classic, a fundraiser featuring no less than Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.

So I borrowed a yacht from John and Lyla Fluke, owners of Fluke Manufacturing, to cruise the Evergreen Point Bridge at rush hour the Friday before the event.

I dressed some buddies in tuxedos, assembled them on the bow, and pretended to play orchestral music as I blared recordings of the greats through speakers to the parking lot that the bridge had become.

My audacity also landed me and my fledgling career some publicity.

Time’s Columnist Michael Conant wrote about our publicity stunt in the Sunday paper.

I’m wired to find weird ways to tell our client’s stories. Plus I love to train them and their people how to find their fun and fascinating storyteller within.

That’s why I so enjoyed Mark Schaefer’s new book, Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

Audacious is brimming with stories of crazy promotional stunts, whacky word-of-mouth marketing, and awe-inducing customer experiences that will inspire you to get a little nutty with your brand storytelling. (more…)

#504: The Layer Cake Approach to Creating Your Sweet Brand Story

#504: The Layer Cake Approach to Creating Your Sweet Brand Story

I love cake. Especially chocolate fudge cake with a middle layer of cherry goo slathered in white cream cheese frosting with ice cream…Moose Tracks chocolate chip mint ice cream, to be exact.

That’s my brand of cake. What’s yours?

So when a podcast guest promoter contacted me to feature Allison Capaldi, I asked why?

She said that Allison has a delicious way of growing businesses called “The Layer Cake Approach to Brand Building.”

As you’ll hear, Allison loves analogies.

She thinks of them as a parlor trick to connect with the subconscious buying brain.

Allison lives by her Layer Cake analogy because it’s a way to highlight that you have to think about the layers behind your brand.

Because like brands,  two cakes can look very similar from the outside but it’s what they’re like when you cut in and taste them that makes you come joyously back for more.

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#503: How to Maintain Brain Health to be Your Best Storytelling Self

#503: How to Maintain Brain Health to be Your Best Storytelling Self

Top minds around the world are making artificial intelligence smarter, easier to use, and more intuitive at a dizzying pace.

Hopefully, it will make all of our lives better.

But what about your brain health?

What are you doing to become your best and brightest storytelling self?

I recently heard a remarkable presentation on creating and maintaining a healthy brain from Dr. Greg Wells, best-selling author of the new book, Power House: Elevate Your Energy, Optimize Your Health, and Supercharge Your Performance.

We both spoke at the Ascensus annual sales conference.

I was so impressed with how he translated complex neuroscience into practical strategies for peak performance that I invited him to share his brilliance with you.

Luckily for all of us, he happily agreed.

Greg is the founder of Wells Performance which helps teams, schools, and businesses become places where people get healthy, perform optimally, and reach their potential.

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#502: How a Brand Story of “Turning AI Into Actual Intelligence” is Driving Growth

#502: How a Brand Story of “Turning AI Into Actual Intelligence” is Driving Growth

Did you see Jerry Seinfeld on the Tonight Show describing Artificial Intelligence?

He said, “We’re smart enough to invent AI, dumb enough to need it, and so stupid we can’t figure out if we did the right thing.”

I still crack up at the term “Artificial Intelligence,” because as Jerry points out, most of our intelligence is artificial anyway.

And there, my friends, is the crux of the brand narrative we created for Tampa-based Green Irony, which turns AI into actual intelligence you can activate to drive smart growth.

Meet Banks, Green Irony’s flying pig mascot.

Aaron Godby, founder Green Irony, said, “We first set up shop in 2016 as a highly-specialized Salesforce integration and implementation partner.

“Working alongside technology leaders across a range of industries, we grew increasingly frustrated watching organizations become seemingly so accustomed to underperforming tech investments, that seeing a new initiative deliver tangible ROI felt akin to pigs flying. “

His journey has taken him from solving large-scale systems integration challenges for brands that include Spirit Airlines, Anheuser-Busch and Primerica, to now infusing AI into the enterprise using Agentforce as one of Salesforce’s leading partner implementers.

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