Karen Padilla

#372: Your MBA Class on Business Storytelling in Under 60 Minutes

The other week, I received a request from Karen Padilla, a Guatemalan marketer pursuing a master’s degree in Global Brand Management at Griffith College Dublin. That’s right, in Ireland. A long way from home.

Karen asked to interview me for her graduate thesis, “Storytelling to enhance non-profit stakeholder-based brand equity”. We talked on ZOOM for over an hour and I was so impressed with her questions, I asked if I could share the recording on the Business of Story podcast.

Yup, I sprung a guest host appearance on her and she happily agreed.

My hope is that my insights about profit and nonprofit storytelling to help inform her thesis will also be of benefit to you.

One of the many areas we covered was about how the majority of organizations miss the mark on Storytelling. They talk about what they specialize in and how they do it. But they miss the real juice of sharing stories about what they make happen in people’s lives.

One of the best examples I shared with Karen is the American Cancer Society’s amazing campaign about being the Official Sponsor of Birthdays. They found a creative way to tell the story of what they make happen – more birthdays – is one of the nonprofit storytelling campaigns I admire the most.

Karen Padilla has become interested in how marketing principles and tools, especially storytelling and branding, can be applied to the nonprofit sector. In her free time, she likes reading, running and exploring restaurants and parks in Ireland, the country that has given her a warm welcome.

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Stu Heinecke

#371: How to Grow Your Brand Like a Weed With Storytelling

Gosh, we’d all love hyper-growth for our business. We dutifully fertilize, water and nurture our brand like cultivating a prized rose.

But what if you’re not getting the blossoming sales you seek because you’re spending way too much time focused on the wrong growing techniques?

What if the real answer is to thrive like an unattended weed?

Wouldn’t you kill for a Jack and the Beanstock-like secret to growth?

It starts by seeding your growth with storytelling.

Today, you’ll hear how with Stu Heinecke, a Wall Street Journal cartoonist and best-selling author including his new book, How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed: A Complete Strategy for Unstoppable Growth.

Stu is the twice-nominated hall of fame marketer, NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center author in residence, and was named the father of contact marketing by the American Marketing Association.

“I was driving down the freeway when I saw a dandelion growing out of a crack in the concrete. I was struck by how resilient and adaptable weeds are, and how they always have an unfair advantage. This got me thinking about how we could apply the same principles to business. How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed lays out a complete model for exclusive business growth based on the strategies, attributes and tools weeds use to grow, expand, dominate and defend their territory. ”

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Erik Osland & Sentari Minor

#370: How to Overcome Stigma With your Story

Let’s face it, you think the world of your business, your industry and the product or service you provide.

But people tell themselves a lot of anti-stories about you and your work. Your job is to reframe their point of view, and provide them with a true, optimistic outlook about what you can do for them.

One of the industries that have historically had to overcome a lot of stigma is mental health. Yet, given all we’ve been through with the pandemic, living in the most divided country we’ve seen in a century, the seclusion we find ourselves in working from home, the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous future before us, we have a lot going on between our ears, and much of it is not very healthy for our being.

Our negativity bias tunes us to horror stories that gain even more strength if you watch 20 minutes of news. But what if you reframed those stories you’re telling yourself, and even help your colleagues, customers, and the communities you serve to see you and your offering in a whole new positive light?

Today’s guests, Eric Osland, Managing Partner of evolvedMD, and Sentari Minor, Head of Strategy, will show you how they’ve had to reframe the stigma around mental health for their growing startup leveraging brand storytelling they call “Mission Moments.”

Eric shares how he started evolvedMD from a personal experience he had with his chronically ill father that illuminated the depths of mental illness and how few services were available.

A Mission Moment with Pierre, a Behavioral Health Manager at evolvedMD

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Martine & Gavin Hammar

#369: The Easiest Way to Capture Testimonial Stories

Video testimonials have become the overwhelming favorite medium for brand marketers to tell their stories. And if you can easily enable your customers to share their testimonials about your product or service, then the goodwill created for your brand becomes exponential.

But it’s hard to capture and produce video testimonials because it’s time-consuming and expensive.

Until now. I’ve been beta testing the new AI-driven video testimonial platform called StoryPrompt.com (this is not a paid endorsement) and love it.

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Dana Malstaff

#368: How Agile Storytelling is Key to Building an Engaged Community

Dang, don’t we all want to build as engaged of a community as possible? If we use proven agile storytelling frameworks, then we can turn our followers from customers to brand ambassadors sharing our story with their worlds.

But we don’t engage like we could because we’re missing out on some simple, proven techniques that truly connect with our audiences.

Dana Malstaff, Founder of Boss Mom and creator of the Nurture to Convert Society, shows us how with her Permission Sandwich template. In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, Dana is a mother, author, podcaster, content strategist, template architect, blind spot reducer, engagement facilitator, and movement maker.

She helps moms with beautifully unpredictable schedules grow successful and sustainable businesses that don’t take up all their time, and keep working even when they have to step way to be a mom (or any other important role).

You’ll learn…

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Dorian Stone

#367: How to Use Agile Communications to Scale Your Growth

There is an accelerating trend for businesses to become more agile (taking a lead from agile software development). And if they make their communications more clear and concise then they will grease the rails of their agile transformation.

But most organizations are bogged down by miscommunication, which is revealed in The State of Business Communication 2022 report by The Harris Poll and Grammarly.

According to their findings, miscommunication is costing American businesses $1.2 trillion annually. I had the co-author of the report, Abbey Lunney of The Harris Poll on episode #362 to discuss where to go from here.

I think of it this way: the term agile relative to business is about speed to market. Agile communication is about speed to meaning. Without meaning, miscommunication is speed to madness.

Today’s guest, Dorian Stone, Head of Organizations Revenue at Grammarly, appends my speed to meaning definition of agile communications making it even stronger (I mean, what else would you expect from Grammarly?).

Dorian Stone oversees all B2B organization revenue and operations for Grammarly Business. Previously, Dorian was VP of Customer Experience Strategy and Marketing at Medallia, and spent over a decade at McKinsey & Company as a partner and co-founder of its Global Customer Experience practice. Before McKinsey, Dorian served in the Peace Corps as a Program Director and Volunteer for Small Business Development in Panama.

Dorian serves on multiple community and professional leadership boards and councils and is a strategic advisor to multiple startups. He holds a master’s in international studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from UPenn’s The Wharton School.

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Blake Hutchison

#366: How to Use Storytelling to Sell Your Online Business

Welcome to the seventh-anniversary show of The Business of Story. I’m delighted that you and I are still here after 366 episodes. Thank you for listening and for all of the amazing guests that have made the Business of Story possible.

Our goal is always to help you excel through the stories you tell!

But what I didn’t realize after all of these years is that I can actually sell my podcast, blog and other online enterprises through the world’s largest online marketplace.

Today, you’ll learn from Blake Hutchison, CEO of Flippa.com, about how they use storytelling to connect buyers and sellers through amazing investor and exit stories their customers have experienced since 2009.

Blake has been involved in growth-stage businesses and in leadership roles for the past 15 years at LuxuryEscapes, Xero and Lonely Planet and accordingly has a unique understanding of SaaS, ecommerce and publishing businesses. He has a unique appreciation and respect for the startups and small business owners using Flippa, as he was the Founder of venture-backed startup GOOD44, an eCommerce marketplace for specialty retailers.

Flippa.com’s global network of buyers and investors–companies and acquisition entrepreneurs–connect, negotiate and transact with over 6,000 business owners on deals valued between $5,000 and $50MM.

Flippa.com’s Making Millionaires YouTube series is a great example of powerful storytelling sharing the highs and lows of building a business and then exiting with the wealth you deserve.

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Julie Hansen

#365: Video Tips for Virtual Sales and Marketing Storytelling

Let’s face it, it’s hard to connect with that person or persons sitting on the other side of the screen on virtual calls.

So how do you own that virtual stage to develop personal relationships, connect with your buyer and influence with confidence to drive sales?

Known as a thought-leader in virtual selling and video communications, Julie Hansen shares eye-opening techniques to adapt to the camera’s constraints and communicate with greater influence, credibility, and engagement. Julie helps business professionals communicate with greater confidence, credibility, and influence in a virtual and hybrid world.

She is the creator of the Selling On Video Master Class and author of three sales books, including the Top Sales Book of 2021, Look Me In The Eye: Using Video to Build Relationships with Customers, Partners, & Teams which reveals how actors, television reporters, and digital influencers build personal relationships through the screen—and how to apply these same skills to your virtual meetings, video calls or recordings.

On top of her award-winning sales career, Julie worked as a professional actor performing in over 75 plays, commercials, movies and television shows, including HBO’s Sex & The City. (more…)

Robert Wilson

#364: How to Make Your Complex Story Simple and Compelling

Albert Einstein reportedly once said, “Everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler.”

The same can be said for communications.

How do you share a complex idea as simply as possible while still communicating the depth of your knowledge or offering? As a business communicator, you no doubt tackle this complex-to-simple challenge every day.

So in this episode, we will explore how academia uses storytelling to engage students studying complex subjects, in this case, geography.

Robert Wilson is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He teaches courses on environmental history, animals and society, and climate history and politics. 

Learn about the popular storytelling course Bob created called Writing Geography, a creative non-fiction writing seminar for MA and Ph.D. students. Not only does his course serve geographers but also attracts students from the social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, and business.

We explore how to use stories to convey abstract information and how scientists, academics, engineers and other professionals dealing with complex subject matter can use narrative to captivate their audiences and move them to action.

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Jim Kraus

#363: How to Use Storytelling to Create Authentic Buyer Personas

You know that the deeper you understand, empathize with, and appreciate your prospects and what they want and need, the greater success you’ll have converting them into life-long customers.  

But you’re not a mind reader.

So how do you take the guesswork out of truly connecting with your buyers from their point of view?  

You use storytelling methods to truly embrace the stories your prospects are telling themselves about you, your offering, and even your competitors.

Known as a creative, result-oriented market insights professional, Jim Kraus shows you how to use storytelling to truly understand what your prospective customer believes and values and what motivates them to buy your product or service. As President of the Buyer Persona Institute (BPI), Jim is currently focused on enhancing the value its core buyer persona business delivers to clients.

He has three decades of experience managing high-performing market research teams on the supplier and client side including IBM, Prudential, and Guardian Life. In that time, he’s worked on hundreds of studies that directly inform marketing, sales, and product strategy with a particular focus on understanding buyer attitudes and behaviors in markets involving more complex purchase decisions.  (more…)