Stephanie Stuckey

#304: How Stuckey’s is Growing by Reclaiming its Brand Story

#304: How Stuckey’s is Growing by Reclaiming its Brand Story

Every brand has a valuable story to tell. All you have to do is look to its past and find the story that made it unique in the first place.

Today’s guest will show you how. Stephanie Stuckey is the CEO of  Stuckey’s, the roadside oasis famous for its pecan log rolls. Stephanie shares her family’s comeback story and how she is using their brand story to revive Stuckey’s brand by resurrecting stories from the past to create a brighter future.

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Ginger Zumaeta

#303: The 5 Laws of High-Impact Sales Presentations

#303: The 5 Laws of High-Impact Sales Presentations

PowerPoints don’t kill ideas. PowerPoints riddled with bullets kill ideas. 

Presentations are the language of business. But the key to using PowerPoint to tell your story is to envision it from your customer’s point of view. What do you want them to think, feel and do? Their decision to move forward with working with you is strongly influenced by how you make them feel in your presentation.

If you can tell a story through PowerPoint that changes the minds and behaviors of people, you can write your ticket in the corporate world.

Here to share her expertise on how to deliver amazing presentations that will result in decisions is Ginger Zumaeta. She is the Founder and CEO of Zumaeta Group and author of the forthcoming book Deckonomics: Design Presentations that Spread Ideas, Drive Decisions, and Close Deals.

Ginger is a three-time Emmy Award-winning writer and producer. She successfully turned her TV storytelling skill into a consultancy helping companies on positioning and communicating big ideas. Ginger uses her experience in storytelling and persuasion to train corporate teams in telling better business stories to move high-stakes work forward with clear and succinct presentations that are grounded in story structure and backed by brain science.

Listen as she shares her five laws for delivering high-impact presentations and how storytelling makes it all work.

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Neil Nelson

#302: How to Make Your Stories More Accessible for Your Audience

#302: How to Make Your Stories More Accessible for Your Audience

It’s not enough just to share a good story – you have to make it accessible for your audiences. Access IS success, but we’re not talking about media channels. We’re talking content that is timely, relevant and most importantly shared from your audience’s point of view.

One man who is an expert at making his storytelling accessible to his audiences, his readers, his viewers, and his customers is Neil Nelson. Neil is the founder of Atlanta Black Star, a top-ranked national online news outlet covering politics, social justice issues, entertainment and culture for Black Americans. As a multi-business entrepreneur, Neil has played a pivotal role in the digital media landscape for African-American audiences, successfully developing numerous online platforms and partnering with Fortune 500 companies to maximize consumer engagement.

He grew Atlanta Black Star to be one of the largest digital media properties in under three years through accessible storytelling.

In this episode, you will learn how to make your brand, business, and sales storytelling more accessible to your audience. Listen as Neil shares his exact storytelling methods that quickly grew his digital media properties.

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Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva

#301: How to Reinvent Your Business Story to Thrive in Chaos

#301: How to Reinvent Your Business Story to Thrive in Chaos

2020 forced many of us to reconsider how we do business. We adapted, and many businesses came out better than ever.  Catalysts for change are often unexpected. But it’s how you deal with and manage the chaos (and all the changes it’s calling you to do) that can make or break your business.

How do you approach change? Do you run away from it, or embrace it? In this episode, Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva shows you how to be better prepared the next time unexpected chaos comes your way so you can not only survive, but thrive.

Nicknamed “The Reinvention Guru”, Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva is a scientist, entrepreneur, TEDx speaker and resilience and reinvention expert who has worked with brands including Coca-Cola, IDM, CISCO, L’Oréal, Danone and many more to help them reinvent their products, leadership practices and business models to meet new market demands and prepare for incoming disruptions.

Her new book, The Chief Reinvention Officer Handbook: How to Thrive in Chaos, provides a powerful blend of cross-disciplinary research and battle-tested tools to help your brand diagnose, design, and implement a reinvention system that allows your company to stop resisting change and instead help you turn any disruption into an opportunity to reinvent your business and story. (more…)

Park Howell

#300: Ten Storytelling Tips That Will Ignite Your Sales

#300: Ten Storytelling Tips That Will Ignite Your Sales

I began my advertising career over 35 years ago as a writer and producer of radio commercials. Back then I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and had little to no guidance. So I winged it. Learned by doing. Loved it!

But in those clueless formative years, I uncovered a ton of invaluable insights on how to use storytelling to sell a product or service.

To celebrate my 300th episode of the Business of Story, I pulled my old cassette radio recordings out of the vault and selected 10 spots and a unique lesson in sales storytelling from each to share with you. Oh, and there’s a couple of bonus tips in here, too.

These story strategies are more effective now than ever, providing you have the courage to use them in your sales.

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Scott Page

#299: How to Use S.P.A.C.E. to Share Your Business Story

#299: How to Use S.P.A.C.E. to Share Your Business Story

There are many frameworks to tell great brand stories. But you have to find the right one for you and your business that feels totally natural – not forced.

In this episode, we will explore a special acronym and storytelling technique created by Scott Page, an accomplished musician whose saxophone and rhythm guitar work has collaborated with bands such as Pink Floyd, Supertramp and Toto and has led to a remarkable entrepreneurial career with several successful tech companies. 

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Jaci & Michael Russo

#298: How to Scale Your Brand Storytelling for Reach and Impact

#298: How to Scale Your Brand Storytelling for Reach and Impact

Good stories – and brands – scale. The key is that you have to share your story from your audiences’ perspective so that they will make your story their story. What makes you special, and are you fulfilling that promise at every level?  When you deliver on those promises to your customers, the scaling begins.

Two people who know a ton about brand story scaling are Jaci and Michael Russo of brandRUSSO, a strategic branding agency in Lafayette, Louisiana. I’ve known Jaci since 2008 when Michael Gass of Fuel Lines hosted five of us agency owners in Birmingham, Alabama to help us sort our our own brand stories. 

Listen as Jaci and Michael provide another way to look at your brand story through their four-step process. (more…)

Lisa Cron

#297: Business Storytelling and the Art of Practical Empathy

#297: Business Storytelling and the Art of Practical Empathy

One thing we can probably all agree on is that we’ve never lived in a more polarized time. But on either side of an argument, facts just don’t work when you want to try to change someone’s mind. If you focus on using story to help your audience comprehend your story internally in their own hearts and minds, your message has a much higher chance of being understood, appreciated and remembered.

On this week’s show we have one of my favorite authors on storytelling, Lisa Cron, here to talk about her new amazing book, Story or Die: How to Use Brain Science to Engage, Persuade, and Change Minds in Business and in Life. It’s a step-by-step guide to using the brain’s hardwired need for story to achieve any goal.

Lisa is a story coach, speaker, and the author of Wired for Story and Story Genius. Tune in as we explore the art of practical empathy and why your audiences are moved by emotion – not data.

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Matthew Woodget

#296: The T.R.I.P.S Storytelling Framework to Drive Results

#296: The T.R.I.P.S Storytelling Framework to Drive Results

Many people believe storytelling involves long-winded narratives. But brevity can be even more impactful.

Matthew Woodget shares his unique T.R.I.P.S. storytelling framework (based on his studies of the intersection of story structure) that can help your audience understand and retain your stories. He loves to use metaphors like “Story API” because he says metaphors are a shortcut to meaning. 

Matthew is a technologist, marketer, and storyteller whose marketing pedigree spans over 20 years. He heads up Go Narrative where he helps marketers and entrepreneurs reduce frustration, increase reach and drive growth using story structures. He’s a status quo challenger who is passionate about finding a better way to clarity.

Listen as he shares his expertise on how to utilize metaphors to convey big ideas and data to make your stories stand out.

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Shep Hyken

#295: How to Create Amazing Customer Experiences Using Story

#295: How to Create Amazing Customer Experiences Using Story

Shep working at the Playboy Club

Are you always looking for your next new customer? Many brands focus too much on growth and not delivering excellent service to their existing customers. 

Customer service experience expert, best-selling author, and Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations, Shep Hyken, shares some easy things you can do to create what he calls “Moments of Magic” with your employees, customers, vendors, and anyone who comes in contact with your brand to drive loyalty.

Shep works with companies and organizations who want to build loyal relationships with their customers and employees and has authored six books including Moments of Magic®, The Loyal Customer and The Cult of the Customer.

Listen as Shep shares how to use business storytelling to create amazing customer experiences to help make your story their story. 

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