The Business of Story Podcast with Host Park Howell

Feedspot.com just named the Business of Story the #1 business storytelling podcast for 2022.

Hosted by Park Howell, known as the world’s most industrious storyteller, the Business of Story is ranked among the top 10% of downloaded podcasts internationally.

The goal of the show is to help sales and marketing leaders excel through the stories they tell.  Each episode brings you the brightest storytelling content creators, advertising creatives, authors, screenwriters, makers, marketers, and brand raconteurs that show you how to craft and tell compelling stories that sell. #StoryOn!

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Park Howell

#426: Ch. 5, Antagonists: How to Capitalize on Competitive Forces

#426: Ch. 5, Antagonists: How to Capitalize on Competitive Forces

You know what it’s like.

When you want something, the universe tends to punch you in the nose just to see how badly you really want it.

You can fear and flee the antagonistic forces that are out to thwart your brand, like aggressive competition, your blind spots, and gaps in your performance.

I call these your villains, fog and crevasses.

In chapter 5 of Brand Bewitchery, we put your unique value proposition to the test by showing you how to embrace your obstacles and antagonists and turn their energy in your favor.

You will not only identify these competitive forces that you help your customers overcome but you will also apply the same outing process to the villains, fog and crevasses that confront you personally and your brand professionally.

I’ll show you how…

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Grace Emmons

#425: What Reiki Energy Healing and Leadership Storytelling Have in Common

#425: What Reiki Energy Healing and Leadership Storytelling Have in Common

Being embodied in her highest calling as an energy healer and guide was not always Grace’s reality.

Years ago, Grace was at her lowest point – burnt out in her career, trapped in a toxic relationship, and facing anxiety and chronic shoulder pain. Energy healing allowed her, as she says, “to take a deep breath of fresh air after being suffocated.”

As she healed herself, she left her job and toxic relationship, called in her soulmate, and followed her highest calling to treat individuals through Reiki and transformational energy healing.

Grace is the founder of Forward With Grace, the first spiritual consultancy of its kind facilitating transformations for CEOs, celebrities, and high-powered individuals from Silicon Beach to Malibu along with leading companies such as the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Toms, Talkspace, Revolve, Dermalogica, and LiquidIV.

Her Reiki process focuses on self-reflection and helps you uncover the core moments and values that have shaped your journey.

Through storytelling techniques like crafting compelling narratives and using emotion and vivid imagery, Grace can make your stories memorable and impactful. Additionally, she emphasizes the importance of simplicity, distilling complex ideas into clear and concise messages.

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Park Howell

#424: Ch. 4, Disruption: How Your Unique Value Proposition Will Win the Day

#424: Ch. 4, Disruption: How Your Unique Value Proposition Will Win the Day

In the first three episodes of the Brand Bewitchery series, we covered what is essentially Act 1 of the 10-step Story Cycle System.

In Chapter 1 called “Backstory,” you declared your #1 position in the marketplace: what you do differently and more distinctively than your competition.

In Chapter 2, Heroes, you prioritized your top three audiences and focused on your #1 customer as the central character or hero in your brand story.

In Chapter 3, you identified what’s at stake for your prospects and customers; what they emotionally wish to achieve, and what they physically want to invest in to fulfill their wish.

In today’s episode, we transition into ACT 2 starting in chapter four called Disruption.

You will identify what is changing in your customer’s world and how you are the most timely, relevant and urgent offering to help them navigate that change.

You will learn how to craft your unique value proposition (UVP) to find a clear theme for your brand narrative.

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Park Howell

#423: Ch. 3, Stakes: How to Connect With the Wishes and Wants of Your Customers

#423: Ch. 3, Stakes: How to Connect With the Wishes and Wants of Your Customers

In the first three steps of the Story Cycle System™ to develop your brand narrative strategy, you started where every good story begins, sharing your backstory.

Your backstory is when you declare your #1 position in the market. What you do differently and more distinctively than anyone else.

Your backstory sets the stage to build your brand narrative.

Then you moved to chapter 2 of Brand Bewitchery called Hero’s. This is when you prioritized your top three audiences, the prospects and customers who are at the center of your brand story.

Now in chapter 3, Stakes, you’ll learn how to identify what your audiences truly want relative to your offering

We break the stakes down to what your customer emotionally want to achieve with your brand and what physically they want to do in order to fulfill their wishes.

It’s important to understand the difference between their wishes and wants because these two storytelling ingredients help you determine what stories to tell and when depending upon where they are on their journey with you.

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Rener Gracie

#422: How to Win Over Audiences With the Jiu-jitsu of Business Communications: Storytelling

#422: How to Win Over Audiences With the Jiu-Jitsu of Business Communications: Storytelling

I’ve often said that storytelling is the Jiu-jitsu of business communications because when done well, you can persuade even the most adversarial audiences and win them over to your way of thinking and doing.

But if you roll into these kinds of awkward and difficult conversations with a zero-sum, winner-take-all mindset through the brute force of your intellect and voraciousness of your argument, you will take a pounding.

After reading Rener Gracies’s new book, The 32 Principles: Harness the Power of Jiu-Jitsu to Succeed in Business, Relationships, and Life, which he co-wrote with Paul Volponi, I realized that every one of these principles can be applied to your approach to persuasive and influential leadership storytelling.

You can roll with my 32 principles of effective leadership storytelling inspired by Rener’s insights in a blog I just shared on businessofstory.com.

Given that I have never taken Jiu-Jitsu, I invited our son and fellow storyteller Parker Howell to co-host with me today. Parker is a purple belt in Jiu-Jitsu and like me was excited to meet today’s guest from the legendary Gracie family, Rener Gracie.

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Park Howell

#421: Heroes: How to Understand Your Customers to Build a Tribe

#421: Ch. 2, Heroes: How to Understand Your Customers to Build a Tribe

If you’ve ever attended one of my ABTs of Business Storytelling mastery courses, then you know the two major audience paradigm shifts I preach to connect deeply with the people you want to move to action.

  1. Your brand story is not about what you *make* but what you make happen in your customer’s life. Outcomes trump offerings in your stories every time.
  2. Your brand story is not about *you* but about your customer, they are the center of your story. You play the more important role of their mentor or guide.

But many people – even seasoned marketers – get this wrong because they are so enamored with their product or offering that their navel-gazing stories all about themselves and their product or service lead to their demise.

It reminds me of the cautionary tale of Narcissus. His story is the lead paragraph in chapter 2 of Brand Bewitcherywhich is all about prioritizing your audiences and what it is they wish for and want from you.

Do you know it?

Narcissus was a brave hunter and unabashedly handsome. One day he was walking in the forest when the mountain nymph Echo saw him and fell deeply in love with him. Narcissus felt the presence of Echo and called out, “Who’s there?” Echo, in hiding, repeated, “Who’s there?” This exchange went on for days, which intrigued and, as you might imagine, slightly annoyed Narcissus.

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Park Howell

#420: Backstory: How to Clarify Your Brand Story for Deliberate Growth

#420: Ch. 1, Backstory: How to Clarify Your Brand Story for Deliberate Growth

Three years ago, I published Brand Bewitchery: How to Wield the Story Cycle System™ to Craft Spellbinding Stories for Your Brand.

The Story Cycle System is our proprietary brand narrative creation process that has grown brands by as much as 600 percent.

The Story Cycle System™ is distilled from the timeless narrative structure of the ancients, inspired by the story artists of Hollywood, influenced by masters of persuasions, guided by trendspotters, and informed by how the human mind grapples for meaning.

Most authors immediately produce the audio version of their book to publish on sites like audible.com.

But I didn’t because I was so busy coaching with my Business of Story mastery course and keynoting.

Lately, many people have asked me for the audio version of Brand Bewtichery. So I knew it was time to produce it.

I also knew it would take many hours in the studio reading the 250-page textbook on how to craft a winning brand story strategy.

So I decided to roll it out in a series of episodes right here on the Business of Story podcast.

To kick off the series, I share with you the chapter on how to use this guidebook followed by Chapter 1 called Backstory: How to Clarify Your Brand Story for Deliberate Growth.

On today’s show, you’ll learn how to define your #1 position in the market, essentially your backstory.

I’ll show you examples of brands that have done an excellent job defining what makes them different and more distinctive from their competitors. And you’ll learn an exercise or two to help you define your backstory: Your #1 position

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Phil Mershon

#419: The Art, Science and Storytelling That Creates Memorable Events

#419: The Art, Science and Storytelling That Creates Memorable Events

You have an event to create or a major presentation to make.

How do you have your audience leave with an experience that they will not soon forget?

Phil Mershon, Director of Experience for Social Media Examiner and author of Unforgettable: The Art and Science of Creating Memorable Experiences, is a dynamic figure in the world of producing remarkable events both online and off.

As the driving force behind Social Media Marketing World, he has become a sought-after speaker, author, and thought leader, inspiring countless individuals to create memorable experiences for their event attendees.

In his groundbreaking book, “Unforgettable: The Art and Science of Creating Memorable Experiences,” Phil delves into the intricacies of crafting impactful and unforgettable moments. Drawing from his vast experience and deep understanding of human psychology, he unveils a comprehensive framework for designing experiences that leave a lasting impression.

“Unforgettable” goes beyond mere theory and offers practical strategies and techniques to help readers transform their businesses and engage their audiences on a whole new level. Phil’s unique blend of art and science provides a roadmap for creating experiences that captivate, inspire, and drive meaningful action.

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Park Howell

#418: How to Use the Story Cycle System™ to Make Your Presentations Vastly More Persuasive

#418: How to Use the Story Cycle System™ to Make Your Presentations Vastly More Persuasive

You know how it feels when you’ve developed the perfect presentation and can’t wait to share it with your audience.

You’ve done your discovery learning how you want your attendees to think, feel and most importantly do at the conclusion of your keynote, sales presentation or workshop.

But your prep, while impressive, was hard because you didn’t have an easy way to create your content strategy for your presentation.

Now you can use the 10-step Story Cycle System™ to quickly and easily create your talk and you don’t even have to understand the theory behind why it works so well.

Download my one-page Story Selling Framework and listen along as I reveal the 13 key questions you need to ask yourself about your what your audience wishes for and wants relative to your offering.

I use my 2018 TEDx Talk as an example of how you use the framework to captivate, educate and move your audience to action.

I’ve trained loads of sales and marketing leaders on how to use it for:

  • Sales presentions
  • Leadership keynotes
  • Long-form videos
  • Blog posts
  • Articles
  • Whitepapers
  • Communication of internal initiatives (more…)

Stevel Multer

#417: How to Reel in Your Audiences With Your Stories

#417: How to Reel in Your Audiences With Your Stories

There’s one powerful element of stories that we know but often forget.

Stories convey the truth that creates the trust we need to build with our audiences.

But sometimes we miss that trust-building moment because we’re so locked in on communicating the features and functions of our offering. While we’re being truthful in describing our product or service, our audience doesn’t care.

They want to receive value in our communications first. And that value is delivered through the memorable stories we tell.

What’s in it for them?

Steve Multer, Chief Storytelling Officer and author of Nothing Gets Sold Until the Story Gets Told: Corporate Storytelling for Career Success and Value-Driven Marketing, shares how to develop the audience-speaker relationship to build trust and move people to action.

Steve is a veteran industry-leading spokesman and trainer for more than 100 global brands including Cisco, Panasonic, Siemens, Fujifilm, HP, and Sprint.

As chief storytelling officer of his own strategic brand consulting company, Steve has designed, developed, and delivered over five thousand live talks and broadcast presentations that connect multinational corporations to their customers, partners, and media analysts.

As a trusted speaker coach, trainer, and enthusiastic evangelist for better corporate storytelling, Steve guides executives, thought leaders, and sales teams to stronger presentation content and increased communication success.

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