Lee Schneider and Park Howell discuss how to choose and tell the right business story on the Business of Story podcast

How to Choose—and Deliver—the Story That Gets Your Best Audience to Act

Last week, a founder told me, “Everybody can use my product!” I asked how her advertising was working, and she admitted, “Not great.”

If you’re trying to reach everyone, you’re likely connecting with no one. The real winners know their best customers—and tailor their story just for them.

Meet Lee Schneider: Master Storyteller for Modern Business

Lee Schneider is the founder of Red Cup Agency, an award-winning podcast production house.

He’s written for Good Morning America, produced for Dateline NBC, and crafted documentaries for the History Channel, Court TV, and more.

Lee teaches storytelling at USC’s School of Architecture and has helped countless founders, entrepreneurs, and creative professionals turn complex ideas into projects that get funded.

No matter the medium—screenplays, news, business pitches—structure is essential. If you don’t give your story a clear setup, problem, and resolution, your audience will tune out (or worse, invent their own). Lee’s advice? “People crave story structure. If you don’t provide it, they’ll impose their own.”

What’s In It For You

• Discover why “setup, problem, resolution” works in every pitch and presentation
• Learn Lee’s “theme detector” exercise to find your most compelling story
• Build a story library: origin, customer benefit, and use case stories
• Make your audience the hero—why your story should be about their transformation, not your achievements
• Test your pitch with real people and refine it for maximum clarity
• Avoid the trap of being all things to all people—specialization is your storytelling superpower

The Customer Is the Hero (You’re the Guide)

Lee’s secret? Don’t put yourself at the center. “The client is on the hero’s journey. You’re the guide.”

Whether you’re pitching investors, selling to clients, or leading a team, your job is to help your audience achieve what they want—even if they don’t know exactly what that is at first.

Story Structure: Your Secret Weapon

From “Save the Cat” to the Hero’s Journey, Lee and I agree: structure isn’t a straitjacket—it’s a launchpad. The best stories are specific, not generic. The more you focus your narrative, the more people it will resonate with.

Related Episodes

The Writer’s Journey with Christopher Vogler – Go deeper into the hero’s journey and business storytelling.
How to Build a Story Library for Your Brand – Practical steps to create your own arsenal of stories.
Making Your Customer the Hero – Why shifting the spotlight transforms your business.

Ready to find—and tell—the story that gets your best audience to act? Listen now and let’s do this thing!

Lee Schneider’s Conversation With Park Howell on the Business of Story Podcast

Welcome and Setting Up the Power of Storytelling

Park: Hello, Lee. Welcome to the show.

Lee: Hey, it’s great to be here.

Park: And you’re coming to us from sometimes beautiful, sometimes rainy, sometimes snowy, sometimes windy, Southern California, Santa Monica.

Lee: Santa Monica, that’s right. Not much snow. Snow would be a shock, but we have had ice and some pretty rugged weather up in the mountains. Luckily, we haven’t been up there recently.

Park: Yeah, well, the weather patterns are so bizarre these days, as we were talking about earlier, that I’m glad you’re able to make it. So your background is fascinating to me because you do, you know, come from a screenwriting background. You’ve written for a lot of different programs, a lot of experience in that. And you shared that you might have a story about you pitching a sitcom to a bunch of what…

Lessons from Pitching Comedy to Comedy Writers

Lee: Pitching is such a strange art because my style was to go in with nothing, no briefcase, no notes, just to show up, accept the bottled water. And they’d say, okay, what do you got for us today?

Now, pitching comedy, you’re usually pitching to people who are comedy writers. And you know, that’s a rough crowd. What happened is I had just come from New York. I wasn’t…

Park: …that I was probably five years out and they asked me, where are you from? And I said, New York.

Before I could begin my pitch, they started singing New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town. And the whole room is singing at me. I’m going, oh boy, this is going to be a rough ride.

It really taught me to, first of all, when you’re pitching, just kind of expect anything. Like people may purposefully derail you. And secondly, you really only have one shot…

Lee: …You have to be ready for anything. I used to think that I would go into those pitch meetings and if they didn’t like what I was pitching, I’d say, hey, wait, wait, wait, I got another story. Let me try.

You know, that never works. It never works. They’re really there to hear you pitch the one thing that, you know, the agents had talked about or they’ve been prepped for.

So thick skin is the term that comes up. And I don’t know if that’s really what you need, but you certainly have to be ready for anything.

Not Taking Yourself Too Seriously: A Lesson from Jimmy Stewart

Park: Anything coming your way. That, man, that’s true in the business world as well. I know I’ve been in my fair share of pitches where you get some sort of smart client prospect and all their job is to try to throw you under the bus and to trip you up and to make you look and feel silly.

Lee: Right, and you know, some of it is, well, the great actor Jimmy Stewart used to say, I take the job very seriously, but myself not at all.

And there’s a little bit of that in it. You can’t take yourself too seriously. The job, that’s another matter. You take the work very seriously.

Lee Schneider’s Storytelling Journey: From New York to LA

Park: Now we’re going to focus this conversation today on finding the right story. And you do a lot of work in the startup world and founders world and where storytelling of course is as critical as any place to be able to pitch your idea, your product or your service.

Of course we’re in the throes of that with our Storycycle Genie. And boy, I’ve been pitching it in lots of different ways with lots of different kinds of stories trying to find that exact story.

Before we get to that, your expertise in it. Give us just a quick little background about your screenwriting, editing, or producing background because you’ve worked with lots of big names.

Lee: Yes, I came out to California originally. I’m from New York and I was writing for Good Morning America and writing cartoons—Thundercats, some of your audience may know as an iconic cartoon.

I would take meetings in LA because in Brooklyn there was a 718 area code back then. In a lot of the valley here in California, there’s an 818 area. So people assumed I was a neighbor incorrectly.

They would say, could you be here tomorrow for a meeting? And I’d say, sure. In those days, I literally ran to LaGuardia Airport and got on a plane.

I started writing features. I had a three feature deal with Disney. I wrote television shows, kind of like a writer for hire. I was a member of the Writers Guild.

As anyone knows who’s tried that, it’s boom or bust, and you end up as a freelancer, which is what I was. You write for a lot of different things.

I had two young children, so I wrote TV news for a while. I wrote documentaries, tried to write as many cartoons as I could because they paid well and were fun to do.

Eventually, I settled into producing because it’s a little bit more control. As a screenwriter, you are, as they say, somewhat expendable. They can swap you out. They can buy the idea. You can get paid well. But you can be swapped out for another writer pretty easily.

But producing is different because you own the material. You hire the people. So I got more involved in documentary production and did documentaries for the Learning Channel, History Channel, Court TV, Food Network.

Again, kind of as a company, just expanding that kind of freelancer thing, but more for as a production company. So I did that for quite a few years and it gave me a really great foundation in storytelling because that’s the common denominator through all of these different projects.

It sounds very varied and I guess it is, but the common denominator is telling a story.

Why Every Medium Needs Story Structure

Park: When you were working in these different aspects from features to cartoons to news and whatever, did you rely on any one kind of story structure or did you have to jump between the mediums and the genres and come at them with a different narrative framework? Like, for instance, we just had Christopher Vogler on. I’m a big believer in his book, The Writer’s Journey and The Hero’s Journey and so forth. But I would imagine it probably doesn’t play over to news that well, for instance.

Lee: It can. There’s always a story structure. People crave story structure. They may not say it. They may not put it in those words. But if you don’t give your story structure, they’re going to give structure for you. And you probably don’t want that as the person who’s supposedly in charge, right? You want to be in charge of the story.

So I found here’s a capsule, a quick example of that is most of the time you’re taught in journalism to tell who, what, where, how, and why. What happened? Who did it? Where, you know, just the facts, please.

But when I worked for Dateline, they flipped that. They said, you’re not supposed to tell us everything that goes on at first. You need to have kind of a teaser, kind of a gap.

Like, tell us something that, you know, these people, someone got murdered if you say, well, if Joe got murdered on such and such a day, such a time by such and such a person, there’s no story the way we tell it.

So essentially it is the same structure, but it’s just moving a block earlier. It’s telling something that’s a bit of a tease or a bit of an open-ended question at the beginning.

You still have, if you’re using the hero’s journey, you still have a hero’s journey. If you’re deciding not to use a hero’s journey, which is also possible, you still have to have a setup and a payoff.

You have to make a bold promise in the beginning. This story is going to blow you away or no one knows what happened on the night of December 5th. You have to have a bold statement and you have to pay off that statement.

So I’ve learned that certain patterns fall into place that as humans, we really can’t avoid. We need a certain story structure. The hero’s journey is one very powerful version of that.

Park: And it really, to me anyways, from what I’ve experienced, it comes down to set up, problem, resolution. The basic story structure, as Kurt Vonnegut says, a man gets in a hole, a man gets out of a hole. It needn’t be about a man and it needn’t be about a hole. I just love that.

Lee: Yeah, it’s so true. There’s some sort of advanced class thinking about this. There’s a book about these sort of spiral patterns that some stories take.

Like you can think of famous movies where they just kind of get the characters in a situation and they struggle in that situation and you keep coming back to that situation like there’s some terrible family secret.

And we keep in a nonlinear way, go back and go back. And then finally, the secret is resolved. A lot of like Faulkner novels work that way, more sophisticated storytelling.

But if you’re doing a movie for Netflix or you’re doing anything where people might be distracted looking at their phone or something like that, it’s pretty much set up, payoff. It’s problem, resolution. You can’t really get away from that.

People need to, there’s a gap that you fill. It’s a simpler approach.

Park: Yeah, that’s funny because we watch a lot of TV at night. We, you know, Netflix series and whatever. And I will find myself sitting there, always have my phone next to me. And I’ll be like engaged in a show. And then next thing I know, I’m now looking down at my phone at something.

And then I’ll catch myself and go, okay, subconsciously I lost, they lost my attention. What just happened or did not happen in this story to make me check out? And it’s kind of…

Lee: Yeah.

Park: I don’t always have an answer for that, but boy, I’m as susceptible to it as anybody.

Lee: Sure, I mean, I’m terrible to watch Netflix series with because I’ve written so much television and I walk in at a certain point and go, bang, this is gonna happen, then this, then that, you know, and it’s like, get out, please go away. We don’t want you here because you’re wrecking, so my family says, you know, you’re wrecking our appreciation of the movie.

Storytelling in Entertainment vs. Business: Keeping Audiences Engaged

Park: So far we’ve been talking about, you know, entertainment, news gathering, storytelling, and so forth. What are the implications in all of this for business?

Lee: Well, I think that stories are the way that we get to know each other and the way that we make sense of the world. And we’re always telling stories.

You know, when I come on your screen, you’re starting to make up a story about me. And when you come on my screen, I’m making up a story about you. So let’s leverage that.

There’s the old expression, which you’ve probably used—the know and like expression. Like, how do we get to like and know someone?

Often it’s through storytelling. Now, when I use that term in this context, I don’t always mean beginning, middle and end. I mean that there’s a narrative.

There’s a narrative. You walk into the room, people are building a narrative about you. People look at the name of your company, they’re building a narrative about that.

When you use a website, the way you walk through the website and use the website, there’s a narrative. You can’t really get away from it because we’re sequential people. It’s just how we make sense of the world.

So I encourage people to think about, well, what narrative are you putting out there? And how can it really matter to you and to the other person? This is the part where it gets interesting.

People think, well, I’ll use storytelling in business. I’ll tell a story about myself. I’ll tell a story about how smart I am or how I solve that problem. It doesn’t always work because, you know, people need to hear what they’re gonna get out of it.

If your story gives them a handhold, okay. But if it’s just a kind of impenetrable story about how brilliant you are, that’s not necessarily gonna work to make a connection.

So on the most basic level, stories make connection between us. So how can we use that?

Finding the Right Story for Your Audience (Startup and Beyond)

Park: And you do a lot of work in the startup founders world and it comes down to not just a story theory about how to connect with that person across from you, but what story do you tell? How do you find that story?

So I’m kind of curious, what do you recommend to people? What kind of due diligence discovery do they need to do in advance of their audience so that they tell a story from the point of view of their audience?

And they’re not always, you know, pounding their chest about how wonderful whatever they made is, but the story’s about what they actually make happen for that customer.

Lee: Right. And in the startup world, you know, there’s 90-second pitch competitions, there’s long form pitches. It takes a lot of different formats.

But I find you really have to start from within. My approach is from within. You have to think about first before you can interest someone else in your story, you have to be interested in your story.

And so what is it about your story that interests you? That you could say why you founded this company or why you’re doing this particular startup or what’s important about this app.

And you’re going to have to find something about yourself that matters. And I call that theme. That’s a theme.

And I encourage people—my step one, or step, you know, oh, oh, oh, point one, the very, very, very first step—is to use a theme generator to think about something in your life or a person in your life that really mattered to you, that changed you.

Maybe someone challenged you or you failed or you succeeded. And this could be a person from your past. It could be a person last week.

But when you start to examine that story and it’s an exercise that people write out or talk about, once you examine that story, you’ll see themes that come up—that why did that matter to you? Why did you succeed or fail?

And that becomes a little bit of an engine that you can use to build a story that matters to other people. But first you have to know what matters to you. And that’s usually where I start.

Practical Examples: How to Find a Theme and Use It

Park: Can you give us an example of one of those stories? Maybe someone you coach that came to you and said, Lee, I don’t have a story. No one cares about my story, whatever. And you help them find the theme and what happened next.

Lee: Well, I’ll tell one about me where when I was in high school, we had an assignment to write a fiction story. And I happened to have a crush on that teacher.

And I thought, this is my chance to really impress her. But I’ve never written fiction before. I don’t know anything about it.

But I wrote kind of a silly story about talking horses or talking cows. I can’t remember really. But she read it out loud in the class, which is terrifying.

But I watched those people, the students laughing at what I hoped were jokes, and she laughed at the jokes. And that was, first of all, my crush fulfilled like, wow, okay, you know, she likes what I wrote.

But it was the very first time that I realized I could write something down that could move people. I could create some kind of emotional connection with people with something that I wrote.

And that has stuck with me and that kind of, okay, that feels good or that sense of connection has really been a motor for me, a driver to keep writing stories.

There’s a story about the Nike origin story, which goes in brief that one of the founders of Nike got a waffle iron for his wedding present and he took it out to the garage and put polyurethane in it and ruined it for waffles.

Turned it into a sneaker maker, you know, who’s making the waffle sole of a Nike sneaker, which is a brilliant idea. And Phil Knight, the other partner, took that around to track meets.

They like literally had a box of sneakers that they had made by hand. And it would have been probably a pretty good sell, but Phil Knight really believed in running. He believed that running would make the world a better place, that if everybody ran, we’d be happier.

That’s a story about himself, but it also connects with the buyer, the track coach who says, yeah, my guys need better shoes so they can be running better. He happened to have, you know, Phil Knight had the shoes, but his pitch was not these are cheaper or, you know, his pitch in part was these are better.

But his pitch was running makes the world a better place. There’s a real human connection to that story. So Nike goes from a, you know, garage-based company to a global leader.

And you can tell the story about Hewlett-Packard and Apple and other places where there’s a nice story arc, you know, a story arc helps from, and there’s a nice setup and payoff, but it really has to do with the person.

It’s, you know, you have to be interested in your own story first. So to answer the question directly, I work with people to find out, okay, what’s your story? You know, what about you?

Even if you use that in a foundational way, you don’t use that every time you pitch or every time you do an elevator pitch, but you know it, you’re aware of it.

Adapting Your Story for Different Audiences and Business Scenarios

Park: So I’m really interested, fascinated in this idea about how do you find the right story in this case. It’s like, okay, what’s the story about you that you are excited about and it is interesting and you’re going to share it, but you are going to share it from the point of view of your audience so they can live vicariously through you and say, you’re kind of like me or I’ve experienced something like that.

Say let’s move on beyond startup and founder and let’s say you’ve got, you know, an SMB—small, medium-sized business, you’re doing well, and you’re going in for a big pitch. And it’s between you and one other contractor to fulfill this order. Story still plays a very prominent role in that.

How then might you find a different kind of story in that situation?

Lee: I think it’s understanding. There’s a very smart term called a story gap—that customers have a story gap. They come in needing something.

So you have to understand what is that and how to, can you differentiate yourself and understanding what they really need? If you think, well, they’re looking for the cheapest solution to the problem, you really put yourself in a big bucket with a lot of other people who are always willing to do it cheaper than you will do it, which I know as a podcast producer and media producer myself, there’s always someone who’s going to do it cheaper than I can do it.

And, you know, sometimes they get hired. When I think about, say, I teach a course in a school of architecture about media making and storytelling, and there was a survey done of what satisfies architects and architects, a job well done. They want to—maybe it should be sustainable, it should be ecologically sound, it should be beautiful. These are the things that architects like.

But the American Institute of Architecture also did a survey of clients. And the clients high on their list was, we’re listened to. You architect, you’re listening to us. You’re hearing what we want.

And also on their list was the thing works, the building works, it doesn’t fall apart. It looks good. But the order of importance was radically different.

And I think people forget that a lot, where your client wants to be listened to. So a good question to ask in choosing the right story is, how much of a collaboration is the client looking for here? Do they want to talk it over with you and work this thing out together? Or do they just want your solution and they want it to be fast, cheap, and good—the three things that are hard to put together in one thing, but is that what they want?

So this is a research issue and it’s an understanding issue where you really need to know, what does the client really need? You know, they want, you know, we’re on Riverside right now. We’re recording this on a podcast platform that has gone through various iterations. The idea of Riverside is to make it easy to do podcasts.

Is that what we want as clients? Well, it’s—I use it, you use it. It’s worked for us. So they have heard us and they have. When we use this platform, they pitched, well, it’s going to be easier to do a podcast. And we both said yes to that.

It’s not that they’re friendlier or I’ve never met the people who did Riverside. It’s not that I even know them, but they did respond to a need of mine, which was make it easy.

So the Venn diagram here where things get interesting, the overlapping shapes are you have to hear what the client wants, but you can’t put yourself in such a big bucket that everybody could deliver that. You have to deliver uniquely into something that they say they want to need.

And sometimes what they say they want is not always what they really need, which adds another level of complexity. But it is about differentiating yourself and hearing what they want.

The Customer’s Journey: Want vs. Need in Storytelling

Park: And it’s funny that you say that because isn’t that kind of a general premise too? You see it in the hero’s journey and other big movies is quite often you’re introduced to the character, the protagonist in the story, and they really want this.

But the whole story is about actually their character arc of from what they want to what they actually need that they don’t recognize at the beginning of the story until they go through the trials and tribulations.

Lee: That’s right.

Park: And come out the other end and like, I wanted fame and fortune, but what I actually needed was solitude to have the impact, you know?

Lee: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that’s very powerful. And also, your clients may say that they want efficiency, but what they really want is you to stay with them through the whole process.

It’s kind of a deeper listening, I guess, is what I’m getting at. And to take the hero’s journey idea, often people who are pitching something or business owners, we put ourselves in the center of the story as kind of the protagonist, like we’re on the hero’s journey, but that actually doesn’t work that well.

The client is on the hero’s journey and you have to kind of position yourself as Obi-Wan Kenobi or some kind of guide without being pretentious or annoying about it. Cause you’re really helping the client. You’re in service to the client and you’re really helping the client fulfill what they need and guide them through it.

So it’s, you know, you can’t put yourself at the center of the story and have it, have it sell.

Realization: The Hero’s Journey as Customer Journey

Park: Yeah, that was my big aha when I was first introduced to the Hero’s Journey when our son was going to film school back in the early 2000s. And I looked at it and said, well, this is a customer journey.

You know, I mean, why don’t they teach this in sales and marketing? Figure out where the customer is on their Hero’s Journey for trying to achieve something that they are not currently achieving because they’ve got a gap. They’ve got a problem.

And how can you then insert yourself into their narrative as their mentor or guide to help them get what they want in the travels? To me, I mean, Lee, it was such a foundational moment for me. It hit me all at once. It was like I had all these disparate parts of my brain working in story and whatever in the advertising business branding world. And then it was one night and it was aha. I go, my God, here is the structure to what I’ve been looking for.

Lee: Yeah, there are aha moments. They’re good when they happen.

Building a Story Library: Categories of Business Stories

Park: Do you find that there are categories of stories? So again, say I’m a founder, startup or business person, whatever, and I need to build a story library because it’s not one story size fits all people.

And I’ve got to have maybe a story about me. Maybe I need to have a different story about a client that went through something similar to my prospect is going through. Maybe it’s a story about something happening in the world order that I use as an analogy to make a point about something I’m going to help them with.

With that in mind, are there different categories of themed stories that you profess?

Lee: Sure, I mean, structurally often very similar, there’s—every business needs to know their origin story. How’d you get this thing started? You know, people always want to ask you, well, how’d you get started in this? And you need a good story to deliver there.

A use case, you alluded to that. It’s usually smart to have some customer success story. We’ve seen these on packaging even, when you buy some kind of shaving cream or something. There’s a customer success story right on the bottom of the package sometimes.

And also a who—what I call it a who benefits story. Now, what that is, is a built out testimonial. You know, someone will review something or say something about, I really love this kind of computer because it helped me do this.

But when someone can really say they benefited, it changed their life. Like, this is silly, but if I were to say, how did Zoom benefit my life? Or how did Riverside, or how did the ability to talk into a computer and talk to another person live, how did that benefit my life?

Well, I could give a pretty good testimonial for, say, Zoom or this system, because it’s permitted me to work from anywhere and talk to anyone anywhere in the world. And I could give a pretty good pitch for that because I have benefited.

So those for me are the three big areas: an origin story, a benefit case, and a more general use case or use story.

Story Differentiation: Why Specificity Wins

Park: It’s interesting thinking about Zoom versus Riverside because I use both and I pay my monthly subscription for both, which is roughly about the same amount of money.

But they do the exact same thing, essentially, really, you know, when it ultimately comes to, they connect us virtually and you can record it and you’ve got video and so forth. But I have two completely separate narratives for each of the products and I use them differently.

I would never use Riverside for a large training program. I use Zoom for that. It’s easy. I can share my screen very easily. I can have chats and so forth. The audio quality isn’t great. It’s not horrible, but it’s okay for that large scale training.

But for like you and I who produce podcasts, Riverside’s way better because we have this one-on-one communication. The audio is way better. They’ve got a built-in AI that can clean up your audio, you know?

So even though your audio is coming in from, I think off your computer, of getting a bit of room noise. A couple of years ago, I would just be stuck with that. Now I can put it into that AI and it cleans it up like you’re, you know, got a Sony mic sitting here like I do.

So two different narratives, two different products. They both get my money, but they, as the product, as the brand have to understand the gap that I’m looking for. For Zoom, I could count on it, never have any problem and I don’t care about the audio quality. It’s fine for virtual training, but for Riverside, it has a little bit, a few more bugs in it, but I’m okay to overlook those bugs because the audio quality and then how they create your magic clips is so much better.

Lee: Right. Well, this comes to the notion of mission creep and trying to be everything to everyone. And often, especially in small businesses, you know, you’ll hear business owners say, I can address any problem to anyone. You know, if I’m a sign painter, I’m going to paint a sign for anybody who comes in the shop. No problem.

Well, you know, it’s not always great to do that, because to be specific—there’s a strange paradox. The more specific you are about your pitch and your story, the more generally it can reach people because people divide into groups.

You know, to get back to the storytelling notion, we’re always using the stories we tell to make an evaluation about someone. Is this person in my group? Are they worth listening to? Do they deserve to have my attention by the story they’re telling?

And it gets into, you know, there’s a lot of people out there producing podcasts, for example, there’s a lot of people out there trying to paint signs, a lot of printers, whatever you might be in your small business, but how do you really focus in on the audience?

So when they come into your virtual store or into your real store, how do they feel like, yeah, I made the right decision here. I got the right people. These are my people. That’s a storytelling challenge most of the time.

The Power of a Singular Story Thread

Park: And isn’t that, again, another basic principle of storytelling is finding that singular thread, quite often that singular problem solution dynamic, so that you’re not showing up like trying to be a wizard for every possible answer to anything. You are the go-to expert for one thing done really, really well.

Lee: Yeah, it’s so true. You know, as a screenwriter, in my naivete when I began, I believed in someone like Stanley Kubrick who could do any kind of a movie. He could do scary movies, he could do comedy movies, he could do historical movies. And I thought, I’m gonna be just like that. And I’m gonna be able to do any kind of movie that they tell, just throw it at me, I can do it.

Well, it doesn’t really work like that because people are—there is such a thing as a personal brand and there’s such a thing as expertise and people come to divide you out. So if they think you’re a comedy person or a drama person, they’re not going to hire you for something else unless they know you really well or your agent knows them really well.

So there is this specialization is a great gift to think about exactly what you do well and do that and stick with that. And we’ve seen, you know, even in the world of software where people try to throw too much stuff into the bucket and we end up leaving that particular piece of software because it’s trying to be all things to all people.

Just like a writer who’s really known for comedy says, I’m really going to do drama. It doesn’t always work to make the switch.

Common Storytelling Gaps and Mistakes in Business

Park: Besides trying to be all things to all people in your storytelling, what’s another big gap you see or mistake you see that business people in particular make in their quote unquote storytelling?

Lee: I think it’s a sensitivity to the listener, which sounds—I mean, I’m in Southern California, so I can get a little woo woo here—but reading the room is a big deal.

When I give keynotes and talks, I’m doing my thing, right? I’m doing the talk, but I’m also reserving a little corner of my mind to watch how people are taking it. You know, what are they?

Are they really listening? Are people starting to cough or are people starting to look away? Am I losing them or keeping them? And that really matters with a business pitch as well, or just meeting people for the first time.

You know, are they scanning the room looking for someone else to meet? When I used to write plays in New York, I would sit in the back of the hall, you know, in the back of the room and be anonymous and watch the play as the audience watched it.

And of course, I was happy when they laughed at the jokes and I was happy when they got really quiet during the dramatic parts. But if there was a lot of coughing and shuffling and moving around, I realized that’s the part of the play that I have to cut. That I lost them there. Something happened there.

And I see that now, even giving a keynote, if there’s a lot of coughing and shuffling and looking at phones and kind of glancing, you know, I got to fix that part of the keynote.

So I would say sensitivity to the listener, really being in the room, being present and reading the room is something you’d need to do.

How to Fix Story Gaps: Real-World Testing and Feedback

Park: So you identify something that needs to be fixed. How do you identify how you’re going to fix it properly?

Lee: Well, if you’re giving a pitch, say, give it to a real person. Find a spouse. I usually start with stuffed animals because I like to have eye contact. So I’ll put a stuffed animal up there and I’ll…

Yeah, and, you know, they can’t break away, but I try to make eye contact and then I’ll practice if it’s an important pitch or speech, I’ll practice it. I’ll get anyone who will listen to me because then you get to see a real live interaction.

It’s good to say, read something over and over. It’s good to record yourself saying it and listen back. It’s good to go on a walk and try to listen, you know, break it up, change anything you can do.

But there’s no substitute for just talking to a real person and trying to deliver to them and see how they react and then ask them, you know, the acid test, the most difficult question of any presentation is after you finish it, whether it’s 10 minutes or one minute or 20 minutes, ask the person, could you repeat back to me the key points of what I just said?

And if the person says, I don’t know, you know you failed. If they can deliver a version of what you said, then you know it’s worked.

Lee’s Storyline Sessions: Story Coaching for Founders and Creatives

Park: Now you’ve got these storyline sessions that you would take us through those a little bit. What are they and how do people use them?

Lee: I found that most people start—teach startup founders and architects and designers predominantly, and I’m working on one for introverts because introverts are an interesting group of folks—but most people want four hours, one hour segments.

Most of these I’ve done via Zoom. Some I’ve done as live presentations, but if you get on a Zoom with me for an hour a week, for four weeks, we can tackle a specific project.

Most people come to me with a project. I’m doing a presentation. I want to get it right. Or I’m doing a startup founder pitch and I need to raise money. I want to get it right. Or I’m an architect needs new business. I want to revamp how I get business.

Let’s do four hours, one hour pieces. So people come with an idea to workshop. And if the group is the right group, putting the cohort together is a big deal.

If I can find the right group of startup founders or the right group of architectural or design people, our ideas cross pollinate. We solve each other’s problems in these groups because you give your talk to somebody and they’ll be able to come back to you and help you with it.

So I found that format of usually a Zoom, usually four hours over a month works really well for these.

Story Frameworks in Practice: Narrative Structure for Any Medium

Park: And do you have a set narrative framework that you base it on? Like I’ve got my story cycle system and I also use the And, But, Therefore narrative framework a lot, as my listeners know. Do you have a structure you follow?

Lee: Sure, I usually start with the thing we just spoke about earlier—a theme detector. Let’s find out why the story matters to you.

And then I talk about story arc and story structure, the setup and payoff structure and how we can fit, filter really your story into a structure like that.

And then it gets very specific because some people are doing the video. Some people are doing a live presentation. Some people are revamping a website.

So then we can workshop. Once we lay the foundation, we can workshop very specific ideas. Sometimes with me offline, like we’ll have office hours.

I come from this academic background now at USC where I teach. So one thing that works really well is teaching a course. I do that. That’s 15 weeks. So that’s quite a long journey, but talking for a few hours, hook, doing breakout rooms with people, but also having office hours where you connect with me one to one to work out a specific problem.

So yes, I do have a structure because I found after doing this for three decades and more that there is a structure to most stories. There’s different flavors and there’s different pacing and there’s different material, but there’s certainly a structure that I can apply to almost any kind of a story.

Adapting Story Frameworks: Save the Cat and Other Methods

Park: Yeah, I found Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, you know, which I think is reading that every screenwriter has to have. My son sent me the book when he was done with it, and I thought that was a really interesting take on story structure and how he did, I think it was back in the 80s, maybe he sold more family-oriented screenplays than anybody else in the genre.

Yeah, it’s fun, and we even used that in a big product launch at a company, a global company. They were doing their annual product launch and they were sort of stymied on how to do it.

And I had just read, you know, Save the Cat, really studied it. I read it a couple, three times and I thought, what the hell, I’m going to give this a go.

And I said, let’s just follow it beat by beat per Blake Snyder and let’s write out what this launch would look like. And to my amazement, the client, you know, co-created with me in about an hour.

Lee: Wow. Mm, incredible. Yeah.

Park: We had something that we, everybody in the room looked at each other and said, wow, this is really good. But it had a structure to it, you know?

Lee: Right. Right. That’s great. Yeah. Structure matters. You know, it’s often—we often think about what’s at stake. You know, if you’re writing a novel or screenplay or play, you need the characters need to know what’s at stake for themselves.

And the audience has to feel that. Like if the character at some point says, well, I don’t really know. Like, why am I in this story? Or, you know, I’m not too worried about what happens in this scene, if you get that sense from the character, you lose people.

The cheapo easy way and cheap tricks to work is, you know, there’s a gun in the room. Anton Chekhov was a great Russian playwright and he had, there was this expression called Chekhov’s gun, which is that if you show a gun in the first act, it has to go off in the second act. You know, what’s at stake?

So we don’t, luckily, have to be as extreme as that in everyday life, but you do have to know, like, why does it matter to these people? The people who are, say, the customers or the characters in the drama, whoever you’re focused on.

The Value of Testing and Feedback in Storytelling

Park: And do you find with your students, the people you work with, startup founders and so forth, I hear this a lot, I’m curious if you do too, or I read it into their facial expressions, it’s like, Park, I actually don’t really care about the theory, just give me a structure that works. I don’t even have to know why it works, just make it easy for me.

Lee: I suppose that’s true. I mean, I’m a theorist and I, you know, I found a lot of, have creative ideas and I found a lot of buckets to put them in.

But, you know, it does involve a bit of a soul journey that, you know, you have to think about why does it matter to you? And then it will matter to a customer or an audience.

So you got to do some self-examination. I don’t think it can be—when Joseph Campbell thought of the Hero’s Journey, I don’t think you can just go, okay, Hero’s Journey, here’s the boxes I have to check.

There used to be software that would break down the Star Wars movies for screenwriters, and it made you—it forced you to put your screenplay into kind of a Hero’s Journey George Lucas thing. And boy, did that result in a lot of bad screenplays.

I mean, because you can’t always go by the numbers. There is a structure, but you have to make it your own in some way.

The Hero’s Journey as a Guide, Not a Formula

Park: Yeah, and after speaking with Christopher Vogler and right before him, I had John Booker on and he’s the executive director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation. They said the same thing, what you just said there too, that it’s not set in stone.

It’s just simply a guide. As Campbell would say, a monomyth in this case, but use it to your own liking. Manipulate it, tweak it, whatever. It’s just something that seems like it’s been showing up in story since the beginning of time.

And so we know that there’s a structure to it, but make it uniquely your own.

Lee: Exactly. I mean, it comes down again to that idea of you have to try it out on somebody. Even if you record yourself speaking the pitch or if you show, get feedback, it’s very easy in this world to fool yourself.

It’s very easy to go up into your artist garret, create something you know to be brilliant and just believe that without ever showing it to somebody else. You know, other people are your superpower in this world often.

The Power of Differentiation and Point of View

Park: Yeah, absolutely. And as we’ve done, as we do with all of our guests, I ran your brand through our Storycycle Genie, which is, you know, just taking RIP around the Storycycle system, inspired by the hero’s journey, but something that you can manipulate and play with.

But it really helps you sort out your overall narrative strategy based on narrative, based on setup, problem resolution. And it’s infused with the And, But, Therefore framework throughout whatever.

I didn’t give you a lot of time to look at it because I forgot about it and sent it to you last night while I was watching a Netflix show, by the way. So what did you think of what you saw? I know you didn’t get a chance to read through a lot of it, but what was your initial take on…

Lee: Well, I was impressed, first of all, with the detail. It’s incredibly detailed and it does reflect things back to me that I already felt I knew because I’m a story guy.

But what I really liked about it was the differentiation. What’s different about my company or about me? I think people forget that a lot or they don’t think about that enough.

We’re not always going to reinvent the wheel. It would be great if I had the software chops to invent a competitor to Riverside or do the next Zoom. I wish I had the software chops for that, but I don’t.

So I’m going to end up doing something that other people have done. I’m going to walk the path that other people have walked, but I’m going to do it in my own way.

So what is that own way? And I think that the evaluation would help me with that. It would help me think about, okay, what’s different about me just by my experience and just what I like to do and what I’m good at.

Because you’re gonna succeed at what you’re good at. Sounds obvious, but it’s gonna be hard to succeed at something that you’re not good at or which really, really challenges you.

It’s good to come out of your comfort zone, but at the end of the day, people hire you for what you’re good at.

Clarifying Your Why and Your Unique Value

Park: Why does it matter to you? I mean, it goes back to kind of the theme of what you thought about, what I really liked because I so often am thinking about the audience, the audience, the audience, what’s in it for them, which is important.

But I don’t know that I’ve always take that shift back and go, okay, but why is this interesting to me that would then hopefully make it interesting to them?

And I think one of the first places in what I sent you that I see over and over again is as people are reading through it, they get to their position statement.

And quite often they’ll say, well, yeah, this is what I do and that’s good. But a lot of people can say this same thing, which then means to me, well, you are not articulating it clearly on your own website because this is what it’s coming up with.

And that’s always a point of anyone going through the story cycle genie process is if that position statement is not specific enough to you, that’s when they should do what you are professing.

Go back and why do I do what I do? What is interesting to me and what makes me stand out above everyone else because of my own life experience, my own talents, you know?

Lee: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. You know, it’s a point of view, POV question for sure.

Like when I was in development in movies and you’re in a meeting with people and people are throwing out ideas about your script, you know, hey, could there be a girl on a motorcycle that comes in? You know, that’d be cool.

Or what if you make these people completely racially different? Like you have them white, but what about something else? Or, you know, this should take place in Chicago, right?

It was part of my job to fend off some of those ideas because I have a point of view with that story. And it’s true with business, too. You can’t be all things to all people. And you have a point of view. And you have to be comfortable with expressing it.

You know, it’s one of the best things that I can say sometimes in business is, well, I just don’t do that. You know, people approach me and say, can you redesign my website? I said, well, I know how, but I’m not doing that right now. I don’t redesign websites and I may recommend someone.

Being specific to yourself and kind of hanging on to your own point of view is a very valuable thing.

The Value of Academic Experience and Mentorship

Park: Yeah. So did it make you think a little bit about your own point of view and that you needed to get more differentiated?

Lee: It helped me see what I know. It made me think about the power of my academic experience and being a teacher as a role, being a mentor teacher. That’s something that I’ve gotten into more without really thinking about it, but it’s going to help me think about the value of that a little bit.

Wrapping Up and Lee’s Storytelling Starter Kit Offer

Park: Yeah, well, that’s great. Well, listen, Lee, I appreciate you coming and sharing your wisdom and all this. Where can people learn more about you? And I think you might even have a little bit of a giveaway for some of our listeners.

Lee: Yes. My company is Red Cup Agency. That’s the website. There’s a story.

The story is my mother was an artist and she made sculpture, did some painting. And before she did any new project, she had a red cup that she drank out of, drank her coffee out of.

And since I’m very interested in creativity and honoring my mother and her creative work, I just decided to make the company name just be Red Cup Agency because it’s a bit—you have to ask the question, right? It begs the question.

One of my sons became an artist and I had the kind of cup I wanted them to use that happened to be green. So I said, when you design the logo, could you just make this a red cup? And so that’s why.

So redcupagency.com is the name of the company. And if you go to redcupagency.com/storybusiness, you can get a free download of a starter kit, a storytelling starter kit that would give you an introduction to my master classes. So that’s redcupagency.com/storybusiness.

Park: Awesome. I’m writing that down. I’ll make sure I get that in the show notes too. All right. Well, thank you, Lee. We really appreciate your time and your wisdom today.

Lee: Great. Thanks so much, it’s a pleasure being here.

Business Storytelling FAQs

Q: What is the importance of story structure in business and startup storytelling?

A: Story structure is critical for business and startup storytelling because it helps audiences quickly understand your message, remember your brand, and connect emotionally. As Lee Schneider explains, people crave structure—if you don’t provide it, your audience will impose their own or lose interest. Using proven frameworks like setup, problem, and resolution (or the Hero’s Journey) ensures your business story is clear, memorable, and actionable.

Q: How can founders and entrepreneurs find the right story to tell for their audience?

A: Founders and entrepreneurs should start by identifying a personal theme or experience that genuinely matters to them. Lee Schneider recommends using a “theme detector” exercise to uncover stories from your life that reveal why your business or product is important. Once you connect with your own story, you can adapt it to resonate with your target audience, ensuring authenticity and relevance.

Q: What are the three essential stories every business should have in its story library?

A: Every business should have:

An origin story (how and why you started),
A customer benefit story (a testimonial or case study showing real impact), and
A use case story (demonstrating how your product or service solves a specific problem). These stories help you connect with different audiences and situations, from pitches to marketing.

Q: Why is it a mistake for businesses to try to be all things to all people in their storytelling?

A: Trying to be all things to all people dilutes your message and makes it harder to stand out. Lee Schneider and Park Howell both emphasize that specificity wins: the more focused and unique your story, the more likely you are to attract the right customers and create lasting brand loyalty. Specialization helps you become the go-to expert for your niche.

Q: How do you make your customer the hero of your business story?

A: To make your customer the hero, position yourself as the guide (think Obi-Wan Kenobi) who helps them overcome their challenges and achieve their goals. Your business story should focus on the transformation your customer experiences, not just your own achievements. This approach builds empathy, trust, and engagement.

Q: What is a “story gap” and how can it help you differentiate your business?

A: A “story gap” is the difference between what your customer thinks they want and what they actually need. By understanding and addressing this gap, you can tailor your story to show how your solution uniquely fulfills their real needs, not just their stated desires. This differentiation helps you stand out in competitive markets.

Q: How can you test if your business story or pitch is effective?

A: The best way to test your story is to present it to real people—friends, colleagues, or even a spouse. After sharing your pitch, ask them to repeat back the key points. If they can summarize your message accurately, your story is working. If not, revise and clarify until your core message is clear and memorable.

Q: What are common mistakes business leaders make in storytelling during pitches or presentations?

A: Common mistakes include delivering information without structure, focusing too much on themselves, and failing to read the room. Lee Schneider advises being sensitive to audience reactions—look for signs of engagement or boredom and adjust your delivery accordingly. Always make your story about the audience’s needs and outcomes.

Q: How does Lee Schneider’s Storyline Sessions help founders and creatives improve their storytelling?

A: Lee Schneider’s Storyline Sessions provide a structured, interactive environment—often over four weeks via Zoom—where founders and creatives can workshop their stories, receive feedback, and solve communication challenges together. The sessions focus on theme detection, story arc, and practical adaptation for presentations, pitches, or marketing.

Q: How can businesses use frameworks like the Hero’s Journey or Save the Cat in their storytelling?

A: Frameworks like the Hero’s Journey and Save the Cat provide proven narrative structures that help businesses craft compelling, relatable stories. These frameworks guide you in setting up a problem, building tension, and delivering a satisfying resolution. However, Lee and Park recommend adapting these structures to fit your unique voice and audience, rather than following them rigidly.

Q: Where can listeners find more about Lee Schneider and his storytelling resources?

A: Listeners can visit redcupagency.com/storybusiness to download Lee’s free storytelling starter kit and learn about his master classes. Red Cup Agency specializes in podcast production and storytelling coaching for founders, creatives, and professionals.

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